Fly Fishing Film Tour nets wide world of angling

Think of it as pouring warm coffee into your frozen waders – a chance to thaw your longings for casting a fly to hook a fish, even if it’s a vicarious pleasure.

The annual Fly Fishing Film Tour, founded in 2007, is returning to the Bing Crosby Theater on Feb. 3 with motivating footage featuring fish, fishermen and waters from Montana to Mongolia.

The two-hour show has been shored up with edited versions of 11 films primed for two-hour showings in about 160 cities.

In past years, at least one of the evening’s films have touched on hot topics such as the threats the proposed Pebble gold and copper mine pose to Bristol Bay salmon fisheries in Alaska.

This year is no exception as the movie “90 Miles” takes viewers to Cuba.

The political dust has yet to settle after President Barack Obama’s Dec. 17 announcement that he was moving to relieve restrictions on travel and commerce with this island nation just 90 miles away from U.S. soil.

Fly fishers hint at the adventure potential as they boat through the pent up mystery to sample the culture – and to hook tarpon, bonefish and permit.

Even if you don’t understand the Spanish language, you’ll know what some of these anglers are saying as the line screams off their reels.

Most anglers will be thrilled at the action of hooking taimen in the film titled “Mongolia,” and dorado off the California coast in “Salt 365” and Atlantic salmon in “Yow: Icelandic for Yes!”

Then the film festival will sober the crowd for a few minutes with ”Cold Waters.” The documentary, which is debuting in the 2015 Fly Fishing Film Tour, features a cast of fly fishers such as Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia calling on anglers to pay attention to the signals their sport is sending about climate change.

If you’re annoyed by political correctness, this will be refreshing.  

“This is the defining social and environmental issue of my generation and of generations to come,” one angler says in the film.

“If you’ve got a politician who’s running for office who thinks he’s smarter than 98 percent of the world’s climate scientists they’re crooks or they’re dumb asses,” Chouinard says.

Other movies on the tour coming to Spokane include:

• Breaking Through – Fly fishing helps heal a veteran’s emotional scars.

• Those Moments – Follow fly fishing guides on their days off between seasons for bonefish in the Bahamas, trout in Alaska and steelhead in British Columbia.

• Out of Touch (shallowwaterexpeditions.com) – Explore the Louisiana coast for redfish.

• Bucknasty Browns – Travel from Montana to Oregon to find brown trout that like to eat mayflies as well as mice.

• Carpland (carpfishingfilm.com) – A documentary on carp in the United States, the threats they pose and why one of the strongest and most desired international gamefish is overlooked by anglers in the USA.

• Lost Boys of Yantarni (flyoutmedia.com) – Alaska guides in the rugged outreaches of the Alaska Peninsula fish for dime-bright coho that charge into mile-long coastal rivers.