fp,

I had wondered the same thing so I did some research awhile back. By the way, I saw your episode way back when.....it was good. The old "fishing the west" shows were good because they did steelhead and salmon shows in places no ones does today-and it was all action, not 15 minutes of commercials and useless info.

Here's what I learned:

Larry went bankrupt with his sporting goods stores and sold the rights to the show. The show continued with the same name for a few years but different ownership. It took on a different look-not necessarily for the better.
Then, fishing the west went off the air totally.

It used to be you could order old episodes but that is no longer the case. I called Larry himself a year ago to enquire about the show and the possibility of buying copies of the old shows. Sadly, some big wig in Portland with a lot of money bought the rights to the old fishing the west shows (about 2-300 in all-I think) and is sitting on them for now. Larry gave me his number and I actually got through to the guy. he said he had no plans to offer copies of the show to the public and might look to run the old episodes (80's -early 90's) in the future but was vague about when or where. He just seemed pleased that he had control of the shows.

I think "america's outdoor journal" is kind of a spin-off of the last fishing the west series but even it does not have near the number of steelhead show the old fishing the west series had.

Now, supposedly, there is a new show called "fishermen's heaven" out of seattle that is oriented to salmon and steelhead fishing that is to begin airing in late december but it is only on "the outdoor channel" which is lame because it is cable only and most smaller cable markets outside of puget sound don't even get the channel.

So here we are with a potentially cool new fishing show in our back yard that most of us can't see! Supposedly, they are looking to expand their market to channels we all get-let's hope so.

Eric

P.S. Fred if you want to e-mail me to talk fish'in- I'm also in Aberdeen. I can give you some of my background.