Adapted to Motion Picture Screenplay!
A flyfishing spoof pitting the rich versus poor in a tiny town in the mountains of Colorado. Story advocates include golfing legend Jack Nicklaus.
I grew up on the east coast and fished for everything from tiny sunnies and perch to giant sharks. When I moved to Colorado I had to learn to flyfish. It wasn’t easy. It’s a technique sensitive sport and a grown man is forced to make about ten decisions before waving a willowy rod to cast hair and feathers to a fish with a brain the size of corn kernel. In other words, I struggled with it. Even today, the easiest thing to hook is myself. The second is a tree. Third is myself again.
I quickly came to realize that the size of the trout a person catches has more to do with where they’re fishing than what they’re fishing with. Rich guys do not cast very well but catch giant trout. Poor guys can cast a fly fifty feet in a crosswind onto a floating leaf it they want to, but they don’t catch nearly as much. Talent has nothing to do with success; money does.
As self-important as flyfishermen make themselves while pursuing mountain trout, I decided what the sport really needed was a really funny comedy pitting the rich against the poor in a one day showdown, fishing rods instead of dueling pistols.
Like most of my stories, the cast is multi-cultural. The poor guys must pool resources and work as a team in order to outsmart Putterman, the rich, obnoxious snob who uses automatic feeders to Jurassicize the trout sequestered in his private stretch of river.
Jurassic Trout is based on a true story a pal of mine recited one day in his office. I changed the venue and names to protect these hog-sized fish from accidentally meeting an uninvited outsider.
The story my hero is Elmer, a little person I modeled after a guy who busted his can clearing tables during the late night bar shift at Chick & Ruth’s Delly in Annapolis, Maryland. The little guy worked like a warrior, always hustling. He was there a long time and I never saw him slack off.
I admire a strong work ethic and this little man had one. So I turned him first into Elmer, then into a hero. I hope his real life turned out that way, too.
It was a thrill for me to get a letter from golf legend Jack Nicklaus, thanking me and congratulating me on Jurassic Trout. Jack is a true patriarch and has raised his boys to fish. He is a master angler, a poet with the willow stick. I framed the letter and put it on the wall of my writing room. If Jack Nicklaus likes it, I’m honored to have written it.