Some movies don’t just entertain; they mark turning points in our lives.
They inspire us to embark on new paths, articulating emotions we didn’t know how to express before. For some, those movies might be Field of Dreams or Backdraft. For fly fishers, it’s A River Runs Through It—a film so embedded in fly-fishing culture that it’s almost a joke how many anglers trace their passion back to it.
The allure of learning from our father, venturing through the cold, turbulent waters around Missoula, stalking trout in their native haunts is enough to entice any angler. And let’s be real—part of the reason every fisherman wants to see himself is simple: Who wouldn’t want to be Brad Pitt casting a perfect loop under a Montana sky?
If you’ve watched the movie, you know that it’s about more than fishing, more than a river, more than family, more than brotherhood. It encapsulates something deeper—something that resonates within us when we fly fish.
I’m not knocking spin fishermen who fill coolers and post trophy shots of giant fish on Instagram. But for me, fly fishing is different. It’s not about the “Gram.” When I’m on the water, I become an observer, a student of nature. I track temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover. I study the hatches—mayflies darting along the surface, larvae hidden beneath the river rocks—prey for the trout. I become an explorer. I read the water and begin to know the river, noting a pool that will stay cool in summer or where a bank has been undercut from heavy spring rains. Even a slow-moving stretch next to a cattle field becomes significant, knowing that grasshoppers will eventually be blown into the water in the warm wind.
All of this—the science, the observation, the instinct—serves a single purpose: to trick a wary, predatory fish into eating my fly. And when everything aligns—when my hand-tied fly perfectly matches the hatch in that place, on that day, under those exact conditions—when all of this science infused with a gut feeling connects with a fish in the landing net, that is when I see the bigger picture. In that moment, all of life’s unpredictability and chaos crystallizes into a single, orchestrated instant of nirvana.
That’s one of the key takeaways from A River Runs Through It. Sure, I see myself in Brad Pitt, focused on the runs and riffles (and again, who wouldn’t want to?) But the story of brotherhood—of love, loss and the struggles we can’t outrun—hits closer to home. Many of us, myself included, have lost loved ones lost to demons they couldn’t defeat. Their successes, their happiness, taken from us far too soon.
The loss of my father and, within a few months, the loss of my brother, left a pain that can only be described as losing a part of myself.
Grief, the weight of responsibility to my family, my career, the never-ending demands of life—paying bills, navigating the constant bombardment of the world—made each day a challenge. But fly fishing was always there. It became my sanctuary, a place where I could silently remember hours spent with my family, letting the cicadas, warblers, and snow melt speak the words that we couldn’t.
Fly fishing allowed me to turn off the background noise, to momentarily forget about bills, traffic, groceries, and deadlines. I began to reconnect with myself, to heal, to process. The river was where elections didn’t matter, where cutthroats and fat rainbows concerned themselves only with their next meal, and I could work on the quiet parts of myself.
These times, these reflections, reveal a universal truth: Rivers and our lives are mirrors of each other. They change seasonally with undercuts and riffles, creating lasting memories, temporary and perfect, joy and peace. That stretch of river may be too cloudy and too hot, running too fast or too low, but it will change. It will show scars, hold secrets, and keep memories. It will endure.
Long after becoming memories, we rise each morning and continue for the same reason. We fly fish to bring all of our knowledge, memories, and beliefs into a single act—because the river, like time, keeps moving. And if we choose to, we can learn from it, grow with it, and create meaning in its flow.
Whether fly fishing elicits our deep inner yearning to connect with nature or simply satisfies our desire to embrace a more rugged sense of self, we may never know. For some, it’s about the pursuit of the catch. For others, it has nothing to do with the fish at all. Whatever the motivation, A River Runs Through It connects to an aspiration for life—for connection, for clarity, for understanding.
