G
narled wreckage litters the canyon floor,
a reminder of unlucky travelers gone by.
High above it—in the shadow of the Super-
stition Mountains—Brent Chapman pulls a dust cloud and a bass boat.
There are no guard rails here. There is no safety
net: one slip and you’re a goner. “The guy asked if
I minded going down a dirt road for a little ways,”
laments Chapman, the 20-year Bassmaster Elite
Series veteran. “I thought, ‘Holy Cow, I’ve gotten
myself into a mountainous dirt road here that is very,
very intense.’ There are cars at the bottom that have
been there 50 years…once they go down there,
there’s no getting them back.”
But how did Chapman get here? And why? What
is an angler at the top of the food chain doing pulling
well over $100,000 worth of equipment through the
lonely, Desert Mountains of Arizona?
Filming. In an age of affordable action cameras, drones and home video editing software, Chapman did what every bass fisherman with a camera hopes to do—he launched a TV show. It brought him here, to the perilous trails that wind their way down to Apache Lake. A place that fellow pro John Murray calls the prettiest of Central Arizona lakes. And you can do that too. After all, anyone can film a TV show these days, right?
Actually, according to Chapman, it’s not as easy as you might think. To do it right, you’ll need to draw up a plan, build a team and carry more gear than that square box suction cupped to your gunnel.
“We had two good cameras, plus a drone, plus underwater cameras. I think our camera guy said his
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SPRING 2016
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