It’s been quite a while since we’ve been able to add some hit entries to the collection of top-tier entertainment based around angling.
In its heyday, we’d see Brits trying to wrangle colossal fish to the shore and Americans looking to pull in hundreds of crabs against torrid conditions regularly. To open up 2025, we’ve seen two rather new concepts make it onto our screens and land rather well with audiences and critics.
Harpoons and a Historic Fishing Club
To kick off the year, Discovery set sail for its latest action-packed fishing adventure. Hailed as ‘the next Deadliest Catch,’ Harpoon Hunters follows a team of fishermen from Massachusetts, to venture into the ever-icy waters of the Atlantic in Cape Cod. It’s here that the specialist fishermen go in search of the rapid, massive, and coveted Atlantic bluefin tuna.
The team have a specialist boat with a tall, slim-framed watchtower, as well as a far-out perch to lean over the waters ahead of the boat. They wait for the tuna to surge past and try to catch them with ten-foot electrified spears. While tuna are incredibly valuable, with one big catch being worth five figures, they only have four weeks to catch the fish, making every harpoon throw integral to their season.
Towards the back of last year, the directorial debut of Hilary Hutcheson made waves among critics for the fun and gut-wrenching seriousness in her short film The Tengu Club. The film follows the oldest salmon fishing club around, following the historic struggles that formed the angling team of Japanese-American fishermen in Seattle, Washington.
Swimming into Crowded Waters
The Tengu Club deserves to be in the conversation for the best modern fishing outing on film, and while Harpoon Hunters has a unique hook, we’ll need to see how it shakes out with audiences. After all, its headline competition is Discovery’s own Deadliest Catch, which began filming its 21st season in January this year. Of course, this isn’t the only hit fishing entertainment production that remains wildly popular.
Originally released in 2020, Big Bass Bonanza popularised the fishing feature and theme across all online casinos. In the feature, players need to land different-sized fish, which carry their own cash values, alongside the fisherman to collect up all the cash. This can happen multiple times in the feature, and the more it happens, the more the feature upgrades with extra spins and multipliers. Now, there are over 25 Big Bass games to meet demand.
It was only in 2023, too, that the indie sensation Dave the Diver swept across platforms with its crafty game loop of spearfishing and growing a sushi restaurant. Still, the origins of the fishing entertainment craze lay firmly on television with the likes of Deadliest Catch, as well as the incredibly popular River Monsters, which ran for nine seasons. There was also Extreme Fishing with Robson Green, which saw the actor take on many challenges over five seasons.
The Tengu Club and Harpoon Hunters are the latest attempts at breaking into the popular space of fishing entertainment, and both are well worth a watch for angling enthusiasts.