Alternative Angling

Fishing Impossible is a 10-part television series following three fishing fanatics – marine-turned-social-worker Jay Lewis, Easy Jet pilot Charlie Butcher and marine biologist Tom Hurd (better known as The Blowfish) – who indulge elaborate hypotheses in their mission to catch interesting fish in new and creative ways while travelling the world.

- Bruce Dennill

The locations in which this series was filmed are often spectacular – British Columbia, the Bahamas, Norway, South Africa, Patagonia, Laos, Kenya and others. Were they chosen with a view to creating certain stories during the series? Tom Hurd (TH): The initial driving force was just our collective passion. We all have knowledge of the sea and river systems, but with different areas of interest. Charlie’s great with freshwater fishing, Jay knows a lot about spear-fishing and so on, so we made a list of the places we’d like to go and presented it to the production team. Some places were crossed off the list – they wouldn’t allow us to go there – but there was never any number-crunching reason behind picking a specific location. 

Charlie Butcher (CB): There were also sometimes environmental angles, like going somewhere because there was an invasive species that we wanted to try and catch.

Trying to script such a project can be tricky, as there could obviously never be guarantees as to what direction the action would take on site, with changing weather conditions and uncooperative fishy co-stars. 

TH: Never work with children, animals or The Blowfish! The show was never set out like that, and because we were always trying strange things, like trying to lure sharks by playing bass-heavy music underwater, there was always something interesting going on. 

CB: We didn’t spend three weeks in a single spot, waiting to get exactly the right shot. That’s a better way to get predictable results, but it’s not what we were after. 

TH: We stuck to our guns even when things didn’t go according to plan, so I think what you see is an honest reflection of what happened.