D
riving a Chevy,
doesn’t
make you
Tony Stew- art, playing a guitar,
doesn’t make you part
of Lynyrd Skynyrd,
throwin’ a football
doesn’t make you Kurt
Warner and buying a
video camera doesn’t
make you a fishing
show star.
DISCLAIMER: If after reading this article you are
butt hurt, you may be “that guy”.
Everybody has gone into the GoPro, Ion, iPhone,
video camera stage. A lot of fishermen are just
learning to experiment with these things and
figuring out it is a good way to record memories.
And then, on other hand, a lot of guys think that
they are hosting the Bassmaster Series.
Anglers that sit at home and watch Saturday
morning fishing shows, don’t realize the kind of
work that goes into an actual show with 22 minutes
of good footage.
22 MINUTES ON AIR
I think everyone that grew up in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s watching TV fishing shows saw Roland, Jimmy, Hank and Orlando Wilson and imagined being them. We either thought... I can do that OR dam, I want to do that! We always had that dream.
Through the connections of what I do and the friends that I have made, I have been fortunate enough to live that dream.
I have filmed City Limits with Iaconelli. I have been around Zona on numerous occasions and ran a camera boat for him. I’ve done multiple episodes on One More Cast with Shaw Grigsby, Strike King Pro Journal, Hank Parker with Dee Thomas and the True Bass show. I’ve not only been fortunate enough to be on fishing shows, I’ve gotten to do what everybody dreams of - film a show on my home lake.
When I work with
Shaw, we’re running
multiple cameras on
multiple camera boats
as well as a diver.
We’ve done everything
from pushin’ that diver
off the boat in Clear
Lake in the green slime
to nearly freezing him to
death in the headwaters
of Pot Holes Reservoir
where it runs off Moses Lake.
I’ve run camera boats for Bassmaster and seen how hard those guys work. A good, 22 minute TV show isn’t as easy as it looks.
For a real show, you need multiple cameras, camera boats, a sound guy, two wireless microphones, a boom mic AND two guys on the boat that can carry the dialogue further than the words that George Carlin said you can’t say on radio or television.
“Nice fish” shows can be fun too. Sit down with your buddy, turn on the fishing networks and grab some beer. Every time you hear someone say “nice fish” - take a drink. You will be drunk before the sun goes down.
LOVE FOR THE EVOLUTION
My favorite shows are anglers in the heat of competition, because they don’t hold anything back and they aren’t trying to sell anything. Those are the shows that I really enjoy. If you take out the draw of competition and just want to watch a show with two guys in a boat havin’ fun, there isn’t a better show than Zona’s.
The list of shows that I don’t like...
Well, I will leave that to myself, but the list is long, and I will say if they would’ve ever changed Beat Charlie Moore to Beat Up Charlie Moore, I would’ve watched it every week.
We used to be able to watch about four fishing shows a week and now we have four networks of
FALL 2015
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