“Running the Coast” striped bass fishing film review, plus a 20% discount code for if you end up buying it
Can a nearly three hour long film about fishing for striped bass even come close to holding your attention for such a long period of time? Even if striped bass are actually one of the most fascinating species of fish on earth and they happen to do this incredible migration up and down the north east coast of the USA each year, and as they instinctively do their thing they unknowingly consume the lives of thousands upon thousands of sport anglers, that’s still a hell of a lot of screen time to keep you watching. We are told that attention spans are less and less these days and of course there’s any number of short fishing films on YouTube especially, but when did you last sit down and attempt to watch a nearly three hour long, proper film about sport fishing? Well if you’re an angler with a heartbeat and you have any interest at all in other kinds of fishing that bear many similarities to our own bass fishing here in the UK, you will click play on this “Running the Coast” film and in no time at all the thing’s finished and you’re wondering where on earth the time went. I am a lifelong angler who has also been involved in making a number of very minor TV shows some years back now, and in truth I find most fishing films and TV programmes pretty boring to watch - but not Running the Coast. Holy frigging cow this striped bass epic is by miles the best film about sport fishing and sport fishing addiction that I have ever seen…………………
If you are an angler then I don’t care what you fish for or where you fish for them - you’re going to find at least some interest in the striped bass as a sporting fish and as a part of the natural world. If the whole vibe and culture surrounding these fish doesn’t get you bouncing then I’d be at least a bit worried. I guess striped bass have been going on their yearly migration up and down the north east coast of the USA since way before us humans were ever around and chasing them with nets and hooks and what have you, and whilst the striper fishery is a very famous and well documented conservation success story that really bangs home to us bass anglers especially, as this film highlights, numbers of fish are on the way down again and the blame is laid mainly at the feet of sport anglers taking too many bigger, breeding females. How could this be when it’s only sport fishing you might add? Well if there is one thing that this stunning film Running the Coast gives you, it’s a glimpse at the scale of the striped bass fishery and just how many anglers chase these fish when they are around. The scale of the fishery and the sport fishing industry is staggering, but what this film does so well is put across the scale of obsession that striped bass bring about in so many anglers.
As a film and indeed a film about fishing and fish, I think the makers of Running the Coast have done a hell of a good job, and that really is from me who has heard a lot of hype about the film but because I think fishing is such a hard thing to make look exciting onscreen, I will admit to a degree of scepticism before clicking the play button for the first time. Anybody can go out with a GoPro these days and make a short fishing film, but it doesn’t then make those films very interesting in the long term if you have a lack of proper editing or no story or narrative or interesting people or places or obviously fish. We all think we would like to see somebody hauling in say 10lb+ bass one after the other, but a few minutes in and our attention is waning. As viewers we need to be drawn in, and with Running the Coast at the very least there is so much variety to the locations and ways in which these magnificent fish are fished for that from a purely fishing point of view I was hooked from the opening few shots. I also love the road trip aspect to it. But there’s a lot more to Running the Coast than just catching striped bass, indeed the fishing junkies featured in the film to me are as interesting as the fish and fishing itself. Watch closely as the different anglers talk about a specific technique or lure or weight of bucktail and you will see their eyes shifting from side to side and twitching now and then - the classic signs of true fishing addicts! I love it.
I will admit that I was expecting a bit more of a cohesive story about the striped bass migration, but we all know what fishing is like and I guess that trying to film a totally logical journey around fishing and weather threw a few spanners in the work from time to time. In essence Running the Coast is a seriously well made film about chasing these awesome fish from their spring spawning grounds and on up the north east coast of the US. Over here in the UK we tend to hear about the Cape Cods and Montauks and so on when it comes to stripers, so it’s amazing to get such an insight into more of the vast areas where these fish are moving through and targeted by anglers. Those cold water flats in the Chesapeake Bay area look like something else, and the small boat fishing under the lights of New York city is fascinating. How awesome does Maine look? The simple fact is that there are hundreds upon hundreds of miles of coastline where anglers are targeting striped bass at certain times of the year, and I would imagine that the filmmakers who bled four years of their lives into making this film had a hell of a hard time choosing where best to film and where to leave out.
There’s a lot of lure and fly fishing with a little bit of live eel fishing thrown in here, and I really like how so much of the boat fishing is in really shallow water where the stripers are sight-fished to. I know a bit about how hard it is to make boat fishing look visually appealing and without a doubt your filming options are greater when you can also get boat to boat or cameras out of the boat to mix the angles up and make it look more interesting. I see a fair few what I guess were either drone or helicopter (aerial) shots throughout the film but I wonder how much more the filmmakers could have done with some of the boat fishing sequences especially if this film was filmed now when you’ve got such easy and relatively cheap access to very small, mobile and nimble drones. Hell, I think back to those fishing TV programmes I used to present and I wonder how much more exciting they could have looked if we could have got a camera airborne. Saying that though, we were making fishing programmes to a fairly strict kind of formula that the TV companies demanded, so from this point of view alone I love how Running the Coast is obviously doing what it wants to do - and it’s so bloody good for doing just this.
You know that I am a shore angler at heart so I guess I can’t help but love the whole autumn (fall) Montauk shore based lure fishing film within a film the most - but it’s not just because I so love my shore fishing. Nope, you can see how many more options the filmmakers have with different camera angles and lenses and so on; the kind of greater filming freedom you don’t tend to get on small boats that are rocking and rolling around and you’ve got anglers casting lures and flies and bringing fish to the side of the boat etc. Some of the long-lens shots of anglers dressed in wetsuits and stumbling around to get right in amongst those boulders and waves at first and last light seriously do it for me, and without a doubt the greatest level of addictiveness to the whole striper fishing lifestyle comes via those shore guys. Watch their eyes as I said earlier, and tell me they haven’t got it as bad as so many of us here have got it. They are obsessing about a migratory fish though that isn’t going to be around for as long on their patch as our somewhat smaller bass might well be, so making hay while the sun shines is even more vital for these anglers who shore fish around somewhere like Montauk.
I have watched Running the Coast a couple of times now, and as much as I easily lost nearly three hours the first time around, I enjoyed it even more the second time. I can see myself watching this film multiple times. What an undertaking it was to even try and make a fishing film like this. From a technical point of view I really like how it’s put together with such obvious passion and love, albeit I think an editor from outside the project could go through it and trim certain scenes a bit, and also get rid of a number of shots on the boats especially that drift from out of focus to in focus - as I said, filming on moving boats is a bloody nightmare! I watch Running the Coast and I am utterly absorbed, but at the same time I can’t help but think about so much striped bass fishing that we didn’t see or we know so little about over here. It’s hard to get your head around that run of fish and the sport fishing trade that surrounds it when we live on this little island and too many anglers spend time bickering about whether a 76cm bass is 10lbs or not and whether soft plastics are boring or top water fishing is the best and so on. I won’t ruin the last fishing sequence of Running the Coast except to say that it’s like a little je ne sais quoi at the end of a great meal. A kind of we can’t help ourselves because we need to go and have a go, and it’s utterly bloody brilliant - now that is some lure fishing with soft plastics!
This is not a cheap film to buy online, and it’s available to buy here and then watch on Vimeo in a max resolution of 1080p. The Howard Films website says that a DVD can be bought here, but I know nothing about this. I reached out to Jamie Howard of Howard Films who put this film together and he has kindly provided us with a 20% discount code off the £29.95 cost to buy the film online - use the code UKRTC20 when you go through the online checkout, instructions below. I haven’t yet managed to get Vimeo up on my TV so I have watched Running the Coast on my laptop with Vimeo, but it looks great and I’ve got noise cancelling headphones so I can cocoon myself away and dream of chasing these awesome fish up and down the coastline of a country which I find increasingly fascinating from a sport fishing point of view especially. You could spend several lifetimes chasing one single species like striped bass and still have thousands of different locations to try and get your head around. I think Running the Coast is a truly epic fishing film and I am almost sick with the need to get back to the US and plug back into the striped bass fishing thing. You all have a good weekend and I implore you to splash a bit of cash and watch Running the Coast as soon as you can. Let’s face it, we are all stuck at home, we can’t go fishing, and I can assure you that nearly three hours of some of the most impressive fish and fishing you have ever seen is seriously good for your health…………...
1. Log in here:
www.howardfilms.com/runningthecoast
2. click on big Vimeo button
3. proceed to "BUY ALL"
(if a Vimeo member it will use your account log in. If not, it's free to join)
4. DO NOT click on VIP -- or will say invalid.
(Enter UKRTC20 at APPLY PROMO CODE)
5. Enter credit card.
6. Press Play and movie is yours for life.
(It's not a one-time rental :-)
7. Enjoy!