(a word from the writer and one of the minds behind the Find Your Water video series, and Gray’s Angling columnist, Miles Nolte)
The idea behind this film, Contradictions, was to bring together people within the fly fishing community who may see themselves as opposed. We wanted to highlight cohesion, that as anglers and especially fly anglers, we have more in common than we may assume. This is a divisive time in our culture, broadly, and even though fly fishing is a very small subculture, we felt this issue to be topical. The Big Horn seemed an obvious choice to display this, because it is a world renowned fly fishing river that attracts visiting anglers from all over the globe, but it happens to be located very close to Billings, Montana, a deeply blue-collar town whose economy is based on agriculture and extractive industries. By focusing our film on Billings residents who work in mining and oil, but who love fly fishing and identify as fly fishermen, we were able to explore some of those perceived cultural divisions. Our main character, Richard Schwend,…
