Fisherman Jim Moore delivers some good true lines here, like "Some people, they all look alike. But each fish is different."
But "Jim Moore Fishing Tales" is audio research notes really, a first draft. There might be two or three minutes of worthwhile feature material, but like gold in the ground, it needs to be mined to have value.
Edward May's read of the intro sounds surprised, as if the text came from an alien source, and it's largely off the topics Moore speaks to. And Jim Moore's monolog itself originates almost underwater with the fish, muddy and echo-y like an ill-tuned sonar.
Too bad. Moore has a terrific smile in his voice and a contagious love of Alaska commercial fishing – it seems he's speaking in a lecture hall with an audience responding to him, but it doesn't translate to radio. Moore gives a good gloss of some unusual deep-sea creatures and a great explication of trolling. But technical references like "since the IFQ program" – a sea-change in Alaska fisheries in the mid-90s – are left undefined, though they have dramatically transformed coastal communities in the last decade.
Then a propos of nothing, Moore recites the old story of a trawler sunk by a cow dropped out of an airplane. That tale might have provided a good example of Haines bar room b.s., but it's an avi-maritime legend that's long since been debunked and which lends nothing to Moore's first-hand experiences.
Jim Moore can move from specific to universal: "What's so wonderful about [fishing] is that your success depends on how well you can intuitively connect with what's really going on under the surface." But the segment itself fails to achieve that.
The Fishing Tales series is rich with a love of Alaska. But it takes more than lines to catch a listener – you've got to intuitively connect. It takes more than just throwing it out there, fishing or producing, to hook 'em.
Summary: Jim Moore tells a remarkable story of how a cow fell out of the sky and sunk a Japanese trawler and what he likes about being a commercial fisherman.
Review of Jim Moore Fishing Tales
Geo Beach
Posted on July 11, 2005 at 04:58 PM
Fisherman Jim Moore delivers some good true lines here, like "Some people, they all look alike. But each fish is different."
But "Jim Moore Fishing Tales" is audio research notes really, a first draft. There might be two or three minutes of worthwhile feature material, but like gold in the ground, it needs to be mined to have value.
Edward May's read of the intro sounds surprised, as if the text came from an alien source, and it's largely off the topics Moore speaks to. And Jim Moore's monolog itself originates almost underwater with the fish, muddy and echo-y like an ill-tuned sonar.
Too bad. Moore has a terrific smile in his voice and a contagious love of Alaska commercial fishing – it seems he's speaking in a lecture hall with an audience responding to him, but it doesn't translate to radio. Moore gives a good gloss of some unusual deep-sea creatures and a great explication of trolling. But technical references like "since the IFQ program" – a sea-change in Alaska fisheries in the mid-90s – are left undefined, though they have dramatically transformed coastal communities in the last decade.
Then a propos of nothing, Moore recites the old story of a trawler sunk by a cow dropped out of an airplane. That tale might have provided a good example of Haines bar room b.s., but it's an avi-maritime legend that's long since been debunked and which lends nothing to Moore's first-hand experiences.
Jim Moore can move from specific to universal: "What's so wonderful about [fishing] is that your success depends on how well you can intuitively connect with what's really going on under the surface." But the segment itself fails to achieve that.
The Fishing Tales series is rich with a love of Alaska. But it takes more than lines to catch a listener – you've got to intuitively connect. It takes more than just throwing it out there, fishing or producing, to hook 'em.