Without a doubt, Andrew Gilbert and I have had an attachment with Clyde since he visited Oak Hill and the images that were created during the time we spent with him found their way into the Summer of 2018 “20th Anniversary Edition” Drake Magazine.

Late in the fall of 2022 after learning that Clyde was languishing in a pole barn outside of Birmingham, we set a plan in motion to bring him to east Tennessee with the idea of creating a fly fishing film centered around the car and cast of Tailer Trash Fly Fishing‘s personalities and friendships.

It wasn’t until late spring and a little arm twisting later we were able to get Clyde to Bluff City, TN. Instrumental in the task were our friends Cody & Kyle who trailered him there from Chattanooga where they met Sam Bailey for the pass-off.

When Andrew and I set off on the project we had a basic idea of how we wanted the film to look and feel. As we started working our way through our shot lists, we found out we may need to pivot on some of our ideas.

By my count, I think we changed directions around three times. Some of the changes were a result of difficulties in the story arch, others were due to getting permission to include some of the locations featured in the film.

By the end of the summer of 2023 we had what we needed for footage and Andrew began the heavy lifting of editing them together to bring the story to life.

Our partnership ultimately lead to being selected for the 2024 International Fly Fishing Film Festival.

The entire experience was one that lead to an even tighter knit relationship between all of us.

We’re already looking for another project to team up on.