Always a Rod & Reel Nearby

 

Always a rod in hand, growing up

The photo above of me as a teen wasn’t from a fishing trip. Not something planned as a fishing trip anyway. I know by the dock shape it was taken at the Circle F Dude Ranch in Central Florida, which means it was from a retreat with my church youth group. 

Retreats always had full agendas, packed with meeting times, games, horseback riding, meals, chores, etc. Too much unstructured time with a bus load of middle schoolers and high schoolers doesn’t tend to lead to good things. Therefore, I probably didn’t have much time to fish. I can say with near certainty, though, that nearly every minute I had free that weekend was spent on that dock or along the shore, casting a plastic worm or some other lure.

I do remember catching some bass at the Circle F Dude Ranch. I don’t know if it was that day or even that trip. We went there a few times. That never mattered. If I was allowed to tote a rod on a retreat,  Scoit campout, church picnic, family vacation, or anywhere else, I always did, and I fished as long and as often as I could get away with. 

I remember that at our region’s Scout camp there was one very short dock where I could stand and fish, and realistically maybe four or five different casting angles, and I would stand in that one spot and cast for as long as the leaders would let me.

One weekend Scout trip, I wasn’t allowed to bring a rod because of space limitations. So instead I carried a spool of line and a Lazy Ike, and I repeatedly pitched it my lure out and retrieved it hand over hand. I’m pretty sure I didn’t catch anything with that method!

At every church picnic, I scrambled to the lakeshore upon arrival, fished until I was called to the potluck line, gobbled down some food, and scurried back to the lake until it was time to go home.

Not long ago my daughter and I were looking at photos from my high school yearbooks. She was amused because in two different years’ yearbook staff group shot, I was holding a fishing rod. Just me, for no obvious reason, in staff photos taken at the school. I couldn’t tell her why I had a rod and reel in both photos, but I also wasn’t surprised.

The year I was Student Life editor, that section had a Fishing spread. I don’t think that’s really the norm!

It seems some things don’t really change. I’ve just returned from a week on the coast as a 4H adult leader at a summer camp. Although I pretty much knew there would be no opportunity to fish, I still toted my travel rod, a reel and a small lure selection. As suspected, I never broke out the rod, but I had it along, just in case!

Basement Studio Progress

 

The studio space I’m developing in my “fishing basement” has taken significant strides since I posted about it a few days back. In fact, instead of just having opened a place where I could have a consistent set and controlled environment for filming occasional intros and off-water videos, I suddenly have a space where I’m excited to film something.

The space is in an unfinished basement beneath a room addition. It has block walls and a cement floor and a pull-string light but no outlets. It is essentially a closet for outdoors junk, which admittedly is kind of a mess.

A few weeks ago, it was a total mess, and I waded into a gradual reorganization project. Somewhere along the way I started wondering about carving out a corner for occasional off-the-water filming needs for my Fishing on Foot YouTube channel.

I indeed started with a corner and with a very nice green office chair a friend had wanted gone — which was perfect for what I had in mind. When I wrote the last post, a corner had been cleared and the chair moved to the basement, and I was considering using a big cooler as a table.

Since that time I’ve switched from the compressed corner to a longer wall space at my wife’s suggestion, painted that wall with some great “oops” paint she found at Lowe’s, added a bookshelf (for fishing gear — not books) that other friends were giving away, and moved a trunk from our porch as a table, which looks far better than the giant cooler.

I’ve also ordered a couple of battery-powered studio lights, added few framed pictures to the wall, and some put stuff on the shelves. I still need a mic for the best functionality, but I think I’m getting close to having a decent little studio space. Of course I’m sure it will continue to evolve, but the base is in place, and I’m eager to put it to use.

Basement Filming Studio?

My most recent post noted that I’ve been at work on my basement, gaining order in the area where I keep fishing gear. A part of that has been carving out a corner as a filming studio.

That sounds fancier than what I have in mind. I don’t even have electrical outlets and will need extension cords just for lights. However, I want a space with a standardized set, controls of lighting and minimized external sound for filming intros and other video elements and possibly some video shorts for my Fishing on Foot YouTube channel.

As you might guess, my videos are mostly filmed knee deep in a stream or the surf or from the bank of a pond or lake, and that should never change if I don’t want boring videos (which I don’t). That said, sometimes there’s need for some off-the-water filming, and on a few occasions, I’ve battled to find the best spot for such needs. And I do have a couple of ideas for shorts series that could be done in that sort of setting.

I’m not sure what the set will look like yet. I’ve figured out the best corner, opened some space and put a few possible elements in place. I have ideas about the rest and have even bought some paint. In truth, it’ll probably be an evolving space — changing as I look at it and work within it and identify possible improvements.

And who knows when I’ll first use it in a video. For now, it’s just one element of the bigger basement project.

Video-related, if you haven’t checked out Fishing on Foot and subscribed, I’d certainly appreciate you doing so!

Fishing on Foot Footprint Expanded

A while back I mentioned that I had created a YouTube channel, Fishing on Foot, which focuses exclusively on fishing that can be done without a boat. From wading trout streams to casting from the surf to walking pond banks, I cover all kinds of Fishing on Foot in video form.

I grew up fishing from piers and bridges and from the banks of ponds and creeks, and while I’ve enjoyed opportunities to experience so many types of fishing over the years, the stuff I can do on my own two feet has remained my passion. I think anglers tend to overlook the quality and variety of fishing that can be found without aid of a boat, and I like the opportunity to share that message.

The channel has grown gradually since I created it and now has a little more than 500 subscribers. Meanwhile, I’m even more gradually learning about video production and channel management.

Recently I decided to deepen the footprint of the Fishing on Foot message by creating a new blog, which you can find at fishingonfoot.com. Blogging is a format that’s more familiar to me and that is easier for me to feed regularly, even when I haven’t had opportunity to get out and gather fresh video content.

Like the YouTube channel, the new blog will focus on angling opportunities that do not require a boat, with a mix of destinations, how-to articles, gear discussions, tales of Fishing on Foot outings and more. It’s simply in a blog format for folks who still enjoy reading stories and seeing photos instead of only watching videos.

Of course, I hope you’ll check out the blog and the channel and that you’ll find things you enjoy and learn from in both places!

Fishing on Foot YouTube

Fishing on Foot Blog

YouTube Channel about Fishing Without a Boat

A fairly new venture for me has been the establishment of my Fishing on Foot YouTube channel. As the name suggests, this channel is all about fishing that can be done on without aid of a boat, whether that means walking a lake's bank, wading a creek or river, walking out onto the ice, fishing from a pier or wading a saltwater flat. 

It's a work in progress, and I'm still in the process of figuring out the tone and types of videos that will be the most prevalent, but I feel like it will lean heavily on how-to and destination content, where I can share some of my experience and hopefully make on-foot fishing experiences more fun and productive for anyone who chooses to tune in. It's also a learning project. I admittedly don't have much video production experience, so I'm figuring stuff out as I go. I hope you'll consider following the channel and joining me as I step farther into this venture. I've inserted a few videos from the channel.