Westcoast Fishing Adventures
Released Spring 2018
To those that know, the waters in the Terrace/Kitimat area hold some of the greatest fishing in the world. Especially if you’re into steelhead. Gill McKean has been guiding the waters for over 25 years. Together with his wife, Mandi, they operate Westcoast Fishing Adventures.
We first met Gill while shooting an episode of Brendan Morrison’s show, Reel West Coast (Full Episode Here) on the spring steelhead season. Gill knows these waters, and more importantly, he knows these fish. It was an amazing few days in camp with too many fish to even remember.
Fast forward just over a year. Gill had just been approved to guide a new area, the Kitlope Valley and was planning a trip in to do some scouting. He asked if we wanted to come along and get some footage. We had just taken delivery of our Red Scarlet-W and couldn’t think of a better place to go test it out. By the way, if you aren’t familiar with the Kitlope Valley, do some research. It’s an absolutely phenomenal place. It’s been protected as a Heritage Conservancy since 1996. One of the few places you can go in the province without seeing the scars of the logging industry. Anyway, it was a mind-blowingly awesome trip and we came home with some really great footage.
Fast Forward another 6 or 8 months. Mandi contacted us saying that she felt like they were in need for some new marketing materials. We knew we had lots of great footage but as far as telling their story, we knew we didn’t quite have it all, so we packed up the gear and headed back up to Terrace. This time the idea was to focus on what motivates them, what inspires them, what makes them get up every morning. They came back to us with the keyword, “Family”. In their minds, that’s what makes it all worthwhile. And not just in the sense of their immediate blood relatives. They see all of their clients as family. They’re a small operation. Their “lodge” is a wing of their house. You drink coffee in their kitchen and eat dinner at their table. They one thing they always hear over and over again from clients is how much they love the family vibe that they get from their experience. So that’s what we did.
The great thing about this variety of footage we had is that we could create several assets without a lot more resources. In the end we created three distinct pieces:
• a 60 second “Anthem”, great for social media, trade show loops, showing someone on your cell phone at a pub
• a 2 1/2 minute edit focused on fly fishing. Generally fly fishermen & women care about one thing… fly fishing! Take away everything else that isn’t that, so that when they are approaching those clients, they can show them the goods.
• the full “About Us” edit that gives you a great introduction into who Gill & Mandi are as people, and the type of experience they aim to deliver. If you’re going to spend 3-7 days living with someone, it’s great to be able to get a bit of a sense of who they are, before you reach out.