The Hollywood elite demand you believe fly fishing is a poetic ballet.
Brad Pitt looping a line in the golden hour looks pretty on a silver screen, but that cinematic nonsense will leave you tangled in a miserable knot of your own making.
Plus, that wasn’t even Brad Pitt. He can’t fish a lick from what I’m told.
In A River Runs Through It, the “shadow caster” was Pitt’s stunt double, Jason Borger.
Meanwhile, the corporate food complex pulls the identical grift at your local market. They pass off pale, farm-raised mush as wild Atlantic salmon. It is a calculated scam designed to pacify the masses while authentic traditions vanish.
I sat down this afternoon with Mark Kurlansky to rip apart these fictions. He wrote the definitive history of cod in the book Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. The 30th Anniversary Edition is coming out in October. Reserve your copy here: https://amzn.to/48ita6k
His new book, TO CATCH A FISH (Storey Publishing, March 31, 2026), was released just today.
It dismantles the romanticized drivel inherent in much of the fishing writing out there. Mark and I got to discuss why we love fly fishing and much more.
Find that podcast and the show notes, which have the link to buy that book here:
https://fountain.fm/episode/j2tjOnzWl34djHNYbgG3
Keep in mind, real fishing is a brutal, muddy battle of wits against a creature with a pencil-eraser-sized brain. Enjoy the show.
Then, if you refuse to swallow the sanitized lies of modern culture and want to build an uncompromising enterprise, go here:
Tight lines!