If we treat them right, newcomers will become native fish advocates, Trout Unlimited volunteers, and river stewards.
January 21, 2025
By Ross Purnell
On June 5, 2023, the historic Allenberry Theater in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania was buzzing with excitement. The lobby was packed with people buying raffle tickets in support of the nonprofit Warriors & Quiet Waters . The seats were rapidly filling with a cross-section of American demographics, male and female, young and old. There were some young hotshot fly slingers, and some older guys I recognized from the local Trout Unlimited chapters. Many in the audience had read about the film and this premiere event in a recent issue of Fly Fisherman .
Some were there in support of veterans’ mental health, others to see a first screening of a film with big-name stars like Brian Cox, Wes Studi, and Patricia Heaton. And director Joshua Caldwell was in attendance to join a post-film panel discussion with vets to share how fly fishing had affected their lives.
A few days later, Mending the Line opened in theaters nationwide. It won praise from critics, but generated less than $400,000 in box office revenue. In October it went to video-on-demand services like Google Play, Apple/iTunes, and Amazon Prime. But then, in March 2024, the Sony Pictures fly-fishing drama arrived on Netflix . In the U.S., the film shot up to #1 on the Netflix Top Ten list , a barometer of mass appeal that cannot be overstated. In the span of one week close to Easter, the film was viewed more than 3.4 million times and 6.9 million hours of viewing. It’s a huge hit that is still rolling upward as I write this. As a side note, Steve Ramirez’s book Casting Forward , which was one of the film’s parallel story elements, also became the #1 fly-fishing book on Amazon and the #55 top seller overall.
“This overwhelming response to Mending the Line reaffirms our belief in the power of storytelling to connect people and shed light on important issues like veterans’ mental health and the healing power of fly fishing,” director Joshua Caldwell told me. “We hope that this momentum continues to spark conversations and foster greater awareness around these critical topics.”
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What does the success of a film like this mean for fly fishers? It means very likely that new people will be casting flies on rivers, lakes, and saltwater flats this summer. They may have been inspired by the healing nature of fly fishing depicted in the film. They may have some trauma in their own lives they are trying to overcome. They want to find joy out there just like the rest of us.
If we treat them right, these newcomers will also become native fish advocates, Trout Unlimited volunteers, and river stewards. They will add to our calls for dam removal, they will be major donors to environmental causes, and they will help in our fight to preserve public access to streams and rivers across the country. When they take up fly fishing after watching this film in particular, my guess is they are doing it for all the right reasons.
And when a film like this succeeds, we all benefit.
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