Andy Dear | Thursday, 1 October 2020
"Come with me on a trip into angling adventure we'll ride the ragged edge where the fish are big and wild..."
---Flip Pallot
A few years ago I ran across an old box of VHS tapes that had been in storage for almost a decade. One of them was a collection of episodes of the award-winning fishing series The Walker’s Cay Chronicles. Anyone who has read my column with any regularity knows that it was The WCC that served as the primary impetus, along with some sage advice from Flip Pallot himself some 25 years ago that gently “nudged” my career in angling in the direction it eventually took.
I decided that these tapes were probably on the verge of complete and total degradation and that it might be a good idea to transfer them into a digital format for archival storage. I hadn’t owned a VCR in almost a decade, but as luck would have it, my mother in law happened to have a brand new VCR that she wanted to get rid of. This happened to be a real stroke of luck, because as I found out, new VCRs haven’t been manufactured in a while now, and because of this, used ones in good condition go for a fair and often ridiculous amount of money.
Once my entire collection was converted to digital, it occurred to me that there may be some other WCC fans out there that might like to see these old episodes. A quick internet search put me in contact with a fellow named Erik Cohen. Erik had a somewhat more complete collection of the old WCC episodes than I did and was always looking for more to update his library. Shortly after we met, Erik started a dedicated Facebook Page specifically for the fans of the show. I am happy to say it has been a resounding success, and with almost 6000 members, it continues to grow every year.
In addition to being a great place for like-minded anglers to gather, Erik has also turned it into a platform where all of the old episodes are, or at some point will be archived for viewing by the members of the FB page. It’s been a fantastic and enjoyable resource, as many of the newer episodes that aired in the early 2000s, I had not seen. And, like me I am sure there were many out there that figured they would never be available to the viewing public again.
For those of you who have never heard of or had the privelege of viewing The Walker’s Cay Chronicles, I highly encourage you to join Erik’s Facebook page to see what you missed. Over 15 years off the air now, nothing being shown today in my opinion even comes close to touching the cinematic quality, or the cutting edge angling that was documented therein. Now if we could just get Flip to get back in front of the camera and "burn more stories in to the memory of film" for a whole new round of WCC 2020!
To join Erik’s Facebook page, visit the following link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/215649642321684
Hope all of you are having a great week,
Andy