Fishing in Pop Culture

Fishing is mostly waiting, and what fills that wait is where the story actually happens. In film and TV, these are the moments, quiet or chaotic, built around a line in the water.

A River Runs Through It (1992): This movie taught a generation what a proper cast should look like. Through fishing, the Maclean brothers found a way to share things they couldn't say out loud.

On Golden Pond (1981): It's a film about mortality disguised as a film about fishing.

The Old Man and the Sea (1958): Spoiler alert: Hemingway's whole point was that the fight matters more than the catch.

The River Why (2010): A young fly-fisherman is fishing for love (and fish) in solitude on an Oregon river.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011): A scientist is recruited to bring fly fishing to the Yemeni desert. Less a film about fish than about what people are willing to believe in.

The Perfect Storm (2000): A swordfishing crew pushed past the brink turns a routine trip into one of the more brutal disaster films of its decade.

Big Fish (2003): Edward Bloom's tall tales orbit fishing the way a fish story is supposed to, growing a little bigger every time it's told.

A Goofy Movie (1995): This 90s classic features a father-son road trip built on bonding, hijinks, and a secret family fishing cast passed down like a rite of passage.

Grumpy Old Men (1993): Two grumpy men spend a fifty-year feud ice fishing, bickering, and sabotaging each other.

Gone Fishin' (1997): This buddy comedy centers on best friends whose annual fishing trip goes sideways in increasingly ridiculous ways.

Joe Versus the Volcano (1990): In a scene that has nothing to do with the plot, Tom Hanks fishes out an incredibly fake hammerhead shark.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004): An eccentric oceanographer hunts a mythical jaguar shark for revenge.

Finding Nemo (2003): This one flips the lens to the fish's point of view!

See the rest of the list in the zine!