In this episode of Tales From The Craft, we take a long look at the past three years that our photographer has spent with George Daniel in Utah, Montana and Pennsylvania. We search for trout, hit some stillwater and then go after some bass all with the incredibly talented George Daniel.
Check it out:
Boats in the film:
Stealth X | https://www.flycraftusa.com/pages/stealth-x-inflatable-drift-boat
Guide | https://www.flycraftusa.com/pages/inflatable-3-person-fishing-boat
Transcription:
Welcome back to another episode of Tale From the Craft. In these videos, we go over some of the recent trips that I've done with Flycraft as their photographer, showcasing some of the amazing anglers and fishermen that I've been able to meet. This is episode five.
My name's Kevin Landgren and I'm the photographer here at Flycraft and I'm really excited about today's video.
Today's video has actually been three years in the making, and today we're going to take a look back at all of the amazing trips that I've been able to do with one of our pros, George Daniel.
George is going to take us on a trip through the Green River here in Utah, and then we're going to go up to Montana for a little bit of still water fishing and a little bit of fishing on the Madison as well.
And then finally, we get to go and see George's home waters out in Pennsylvania.
He'll show us some of the places that he takes his kids out fishing and some of his favorite waters for bass hunting.
One of the things that impresses me most about George is just how passionate he is about fly fishing. He started fly fishing around age six. It was only at about age 30 that George decided to give up on competitive fly fishing and focus more on what he enjoys most, and that's teaching fly fishing.
George likes to consider himself a teacher first and a fly fisher second. He's authored three bestselling fly fishing books and has authored dozens of articles for national fly fishing publications.
George is currently the director of Joe Humphrey's Fly Fishing Program at Pennsylvania State University.
Being able to get out on the water with George and learn from his vast knowledge of fly fishing has been seriously such an incredible opportunity for me. The first time that I was able to film with George, he came out west and met us out here on the Green River in Utah. We didn't have the greatest of conditions, but it was something that showed me just how dedicated and excited George is about getting out on the water and chasing trout. When he first showed up, it was raining, it was pouring, and we had thunder and lightning. Even though we had some really bad storms, George was just incredibly positive the entire time.
He was just excited to be out there. He wanted to learn from us, he wanted to teach us some, and I was really excited to learn about his euro nipping tactics. And then George is just an absolute machine of a human, even though he had just driven across the entire country to meet us out here in Utah, the guy still wakes up at five in the morning to get in his daily run, and so I'm barely trying to wander my way out of the tent to get cameras ready and George is already making coffee. He's already getting ready, he's already prepping his stuff and then goes and takes a long run before anybody else has even woken up, and it's just so impressive to me to see how dedicated he is to living this healthy lifestyle and spending as much time as he can out in nature fishing and really just living life in a really wonderful way.
I almost feel like I have to apologize for that first time out filming with George. I was still really new to my job here at Fly Craft. I had only been filming with them for a few months and I was still kind of trying to learn the ins and outs of how to create good fishing content, and with George, it was just so easy to sit back in my boat and watch him fish and go over all of his euro nipping tactics. The way he explains things and the way he breaks down his process for fishing, it makes it so someone like me who only has a rudimentary understanding of fly fishing and different techniques used that I'm able to understand it really well and he doesn't over complicate it. He makes it so simple and he really teaches you so much every time you're out with him.
I love how much I learn every time I go out and shoot with George. I feel like I come out with a whole wealth of new knowledge and new tactics that I can try in my own fishing, and I'm so grateful that he takes the time to slow things down for me and to teach me proper technique and how to catch more fish. I even tried Year on Ming once and did I catch anything? No, but I was able to try it and without George, I wouldn't have even been able to figure out how to rig up the rod. My second time out fly fishing with George, he again drove out west and met us out here, and then we headed north up to Montana where we were going to float on the Madison as well as some secret lakes that George had picked out for us.
I had already fished with George on a river and I knew how talented he was at floating downstream and still picking fish off left and right, so I was really excited to see how George operates in Stillwater fishing. I was not disappointed in the slightest. George has a really patient and well thought out technique for when he's fishing on Stillwater and working with him out there is like watching an artist. He takes his time and he watches the water, he checks the depth, and he really knows what he's doing out there. Another one of the reasons that I love fishing with George so much is that he's not just excited about fly fishing. George is also a really talented photographer while we're out on the river, he teaches me about fly fishing and I teach him about cameras and he can just pick up anything so quickly.
I never have to explain things over and over again for him to understand it. I give him one quick rundown of my settings and how I'm doing things, and he's just like, oh, okay, that makes sense. I understand that. It's been really awesome to watch George's talent with a camera just get better and better. Over the years we've been fishing now together for three years and looking at the images that he's started making, I'm really impressed. He has a very, very good eye and the colors that he gets out of his images are just spectacular. While out in Montana, he did have a small problem where he kept hooking into a whole bunch of these tiny little dinky fish, and so because of the last film I had done with George, we had titled it King of the Deep because he was catching all these dinks. We then gave him the new nickname of King of the Dinks. I'm not totally sure if he liked it or not.
This most recent trip with George was probably one of the most special trips that I've been able to do. I was able to go out to Pennsylvania to George's home waters where he was going to show me around where he grew up and where he likes to fish just on his time off where it's just him and his friends and his family. It was really incredible for me to be able to go out with George and see his home and see what gave him that initial love for fly fishing. He took me out to some waters where he and his wife had done their first dates out there on the water and showed me all of the incredible work that some of the environmental activists have done in order to clean it up and to make it a really good fishing area for him and his kids and his family. Being able to meet some of the buddies that George has been fishing with throughout his life and talking with them about George, they all just echoed the same sentiment of how kind he is and how talented he is as an educator and how much he's able to teach them about fishing, and he does it in such a way that it's so easy to communicate and it really just shows off how talented of a teacher George is.
I went out with him and his friend who George just called him the doctor, and it was really fun that anytime they did something good, they had a good cast or they had a good set, George would say, good job, doctor. It's just, I don't know, just the way that they worked together and the way that they interact with each other. It was awesome. I really enjoyed being able to get out with George and see his home waters, and I'm so grateful that he let me come out there.
This time I actually feel like I did a decent job of showing George's ability and showing off the beauty of the areas that he grew up fishing. We were able to take the drone out and it was really fun because I was typically in a second boat and he would have either his son or his daughter Romy in the other boat, and so it was cool to see from his kids' perspective of what they think of their dad and they, both of them just love him and adore him and think he's the greatest dad ever because he takes 'em out fishing and he teaches them how to row boats, and he just shows them the incredible nature that they have around him. I'm so grateful that I was able to get out and film with George over these past three years. I can't even express how much George has taught me about fishing and conservation and just how to be out there on the river and do it right and actually catch some really good fish.
I just want to say thank you to George Daniel for all that he's taught me over the years and the experiences that I've been able to have with him out on the river. George is an incredible angler and one of our favorite pros here at Flycraft. He's taught me a lot about Euro nipping and he showed me some really incredible Stillwater techniques that I've been really excited to integrate into my own fishing. I can't wait to see what the next few years hold for trips that we're going to be doing with George. Stay tuned and we'll show you all of 'em.
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