User Reviews

I've always found Pete Smith's nasally voice and wannabe smart-alec delivery to be the worst part of his series of shorts, and this one is no exception, but the great footage of commercial and sport fishing makes up for it. The shots of Chinook Indians hauling in salmon from precarious perches on the rocks alongside a raging river in Oregon are fascinating, and there's a spectacular shot of a sport fisherman battling a great white shark that was so big--750 pounds--it had to be towed back into the harbor after it was caught. There's footage of another sport fisherman landing a marlin in the waters between the California coast and Catalina Island, and some terrific shots of tuna fishermen using huge bamboo poles to catch huge tunas and fling them over their shoulders into the boat's hold, over and over and over; I had always thought tuna were caught in huge nets dragged behind the boat but I had never heard of nor ween this method before.

Overall, one of the better Pete Smith shorts I've seen. It's we3l worth a look.

A Smith named Pete narrates this short about fishing. It's not the sort of fishing I practiced when I was a lad, which involved going to the dock and dangling a line into the water with a hook and some bait. No, this one involves big sports fish: marlins, sharks, chinook salmon -- not for sport, but Indians fishing for food -- and line-caught tuna.

There's lots of good pictures in this one, including shots of marlin on the line, shot with a telephoto lens and high-speed camera -- although the sharks are the most interesting in a terrifying way. There's also a lot of Pete Smith snark. For once he's a bit self-effacing, if you can conceive of a shy Pete Smith. The result is a good entry in the long-running series of shorts.

Fishing Feats (1951)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Highly entertaining Pete Smith short shows various fishermen doing their jobs in a variety of ways. Yeah, that's pretty much it but there's some great footage to be seen here including one sequence where two guys pull a large Hammerhead into their row boat! While the two men are wrestling around with the shark, it actually gives birth right there on the spot and now there are two sharks there. I'm really not one who likes fishing but there's no question that this short here is going to appeal to everyone. Smith is right on the mark with his dialogue as you'd expect as he manages to throw out several good lines from start to finish. This one-reeler isn't widely available as I write this but it's certainly worth checking out when it turns up on TCM.