
Weekend Writing Workshop with Jim Mclennan

When it comes to green tourism and environmental sustainability, Turneffe Flats has long been one of the Caribbean’s most innovative fishing and diving resorts. “Recently, we fired up our new off-grid solar system with 288 solar panels providing approximately 80% of our energy needs,” says founder and owner Craig Hayes.
Hayes estimates “the new system will replace 17,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year, and at $5 per gallon, this will result in substantial savings. Recent improvements in solar technology, along with lower costs, finally made our project economically feasible. When we started looking at this, the payback was around 20 years and now it’s closer to 10 years,” he notes. “In addition to being the right thing to do, replacing diesel with the sun also makes good economic sense.”
“As an artist, we get some projects that come our way that we get to express our artistic expression on a few different levels. In this case, the love for the mountains and fly fishing!
RIO’s Amateur Fly Fishing Film Awards is an opportunity for amateur fly fishing film makers to showcase the sport. Simply enter your short story, documentary or any other creative clip you have captured to participate.
LAST CALL FOR ENTRIES!!!
June is the last month that RIO will be accepting entries tho the Film Awards, so get your your camera, hit the water, shoot your video and upload it here.
INCREDIBLE PRIZES UP FOR GRABS!!!
You could win an all-expenses paid trip to Idaho Falls to fish with the RIO team, plus RIO gear, $500 cold, hard cash AND your film featured in the 2020 International Fly Fishing Film Festival.
Another great video entry for the RIO Amateur Fly Fishing Film Awards. Good work @happy_on_the_fly!
Theres still time to vote and to enter! Hop on over to rioproducts.com and check out the great prizes that are up for grabs for the overall winner. And don’t forget, whoever wins will have a special inclusion in the 2019 International Fly Fishing Film Festival which is screened at over 120 locations worldwide to thousands upon thousands of eager fly anglers!
RIO AMATEUR FLY FISHING FILM AWARDS
Fly anglers looking for easy access to instructional content can now stream “The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing” television show on two of the largest video platforms online: Amazon Prime and YouTube. The show, a 13-part documentary-style series hosted by well-known author and angler Tom Rosenbauer, focuses on instruction in a variety of settings and angling situations, covering everything from fly-fishing basics to targeting trout and bass with a fly rod.
“The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing” originally aired on the World Fishing Network (WFN) in 2012, and has been available on the Orvis website’s Learning Center since. Rosenbauer believes that the addition of the show to the Amazon lineup will provide the content with a second life.
“People can watch it on their television anytime they want now, if they have Amazon Prime,” he said. “I’ve had people come up to me and say ‘I love your show and watched it five times, but I can’t see it on WFN anymore. I like watching it on my tv.'”
According to Rosenbauer, having the content available to stream on home televisions via Amazon and on mobile devices through YouTube will broaden the series’ reach substantially. If you were to click here for the statistics and look at the stats regarding cable TV as well as streaming services being used in today’s world then you’ll be able to see he’s not actually wrong in being able to reach more by migrating the series onto the various online streaming platforms. Not just for Amazon Prime content, almost all streaming platform viewership has increased in recent years. Viewers even make use of vpn to watch Sky Go or Amazon Prime and catch their favorite shows.
“The Amazon audience, it’s a different audience, for most parts an older one,” he said. “The younger people will watch it on their phones.”
Colin McKeown and Mark Melnyk, producers and hosts of “The New Fly Fisher,” helped produce the Orvis show. Both believe that the partnership with Amazon and the presence on YouTube will be a boon to anglers everywhere.
“There are 40-odd million people using Amazon Prime in the U.S.,” McKeown said. “This is a big score for the show, for Tom, and for Orvis. It’s going to enable a lot of people who are learning how to fly fish.”
Melnyk echoed McKeown’s thoughts.
“I believe that this is going to open up a window to a whole bunch of brand-new fly anglers,” he said. “They are going to find this while browsing and it’s going to pique their interest.”
That’s not the only big news involving “The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing,” however. Over the course of 2019, Rosenbauer, McKeown, and Melnyk will be producing the long-awaited second season of the show.
“It will be more advanced, more in-depth,” Rosenbauer said. “It will be a natural extension of Season 1, but very focused. There will be strictly a bonefish show, strictly a redfishing show, a show all about Euro nymphing.”
“The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing” is available on Amazon Prime Video USA, and as the OTT platform geo-locks its content due to certain licensing restrictions, you could always stream it in your own country. For example, if you’re a fishing enthusiast in India and would want to watch it! You could turn to certain blogs about learning how to change country Amazon Prime and watch specific geographically locked content!
Season 2 will debut in January of 2020. Click here to stream the series.
The IF4 Original Film, “Focus”, is now available to view on Fly Fusion Streaming! An inspirational fly-fishing film about an adventerous couple pursuing their passion, which leads them on a memorable adventure under a smoke soaked skyline in search of the perfect image of oversized dry-fly sipping rainbows. For those who’ve never had a trout rise to a dry, a fish might just be a cold-blooded creature with fins and spots, but to you and I they’re the objects of our memories, of our pictures, of our attention. They’re why, as we leave the river, we’re already dreaming about the next trip. Click here to watch!