The number of channels offered by my cable provider has grown to a ridiculous level, but there’s something still hard to find: decent outdoor programming.
I get a pair of channels devoted to the subject, “Outdoor Channel” and “Sportsman Channel.” But with hosts such as Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent, most of the programming sucks. These two “stars” seem afflicted with a mental disorder that convinces them that if a thought occurs to them it must be right, and everyone who thinks otherwise hates America.
Psychologists call it the “Peaked in High School Rob Lowe” disorder.
There are a couple of outdoor programs I seek out. I regularly DVR the Flathead-based “Trout TV.” Hilary Hutcheson’s a great host and I enjoy programs based on the waters in the Northern Rockies that I know and love, especially when it’s presented by folks focused on fly fishing and conservation. I’ll watch an occasional bass tournament show, but if bass were that important to me I’d move to Alabama.
There’s also “Meateater,” Steven Rinella’s tribute to the hunting and consumption of wild game. All I needed to know about “Meateater” I learned from a Rinella podcast espousing the virtues of Michael Ruhlman’s “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.” As far as cookbooks go, this is one of the best. If you check out the copy from the Kalispell public library be forewarned that the smudges on the pages of the duck confit recipe most likely came from my fat-smeared fingers.
Now and then I look for something new. “River Monsters” is a fishing show on Animal Planet and the program was on an all-day marathon schedule last week. The premise here is that the host travels the globe fishing rivers for some of the handful of great freshwater megafish left on the planet. And there are some remarkably big freshwater fish out there; giant catfish in southeast Asia and sturgeon in more temperate waters. Unfortunately, the show ran through most of the legitimate “Monsters” in a season or two.
To keep things going the show has had to play loose with the definitions of “river” and “monster.” One marathon episode featured the host Jeremy Wade deep sea fishing for Greenland shark in the fjords of Norway, under the guise of determining the origins of the Loch Ness Monster myth. I know, a loch ain’t a river, and the link between ocean-going shark and mythical monster is whisper thin. This may have been the first time the phrase “jump the shark” was aptly applied to a reality show rather than a sitcom.
Like a lot of cable television, the producers at Animal Planet have resorted to contrived drama to attract viewers on a crowded TV dial. Another “Monsters” episode featured the Siberian taimen. These trout-like salmonids — growing to more than 50 pounds in the rivers of Russia and Mongolia — are impressive fish and have become an obsession for the type of high-end angler who can afford to burn serious bucks on fly fishing.
None of that explained Wade’s Ahab-like brooding throughout the show. He’d heard a story of how a taimen had recently bloodied the hand of a local fisherman. He fretted from the opening to closing credits about the “dangers” of the monster he was determined to tame. Wade should have just called Orvis. The company offers guided trips starting at $5,950 per angler, complete with streamside Mongolian vodka service and romantic lodging in traditional yurts.
Don’t even get me started on his Kurtzian performance on an expedition up the Congo. The horror! The horror!
This much I’ll say: There probably was real danger when he went noodling for flathead catfish in an Oklahoma river. But then, what part of shirtless hillbilly, beer and moving water doesn’t scream drowning?
That episode may have been filled with river monsters, but they weren’t the fish.