I REMEMBER when I first mentioned to someone another than my girlfriend that I wanted to turn fishing into a lifestyle. It was 1981, my dream was to be a flats guide, and the only advice I got — from a rather odd Key West captain — was to read Thomas McGuane's Ninety-Two in the Shade. A fantastic book, of course, but all it really did was to make me want to keep a close eye on guys toting big fishing gaffs.

Almost thirty years later, you can actually go to school to learn the profession of guiding, especially if your goal is to be a guide in the western U.S. This week Phil Monahan talks about what it takes to be a guide and how to get the right drift on your new career.

WE'VE WAITED A LONG TIME for the commercial release of "Rivers of a Lost Coast," an important new documentary about northern California steelhead culture. The film has already won numerous awards, including the Jury Award from the 2009 Sacramento International Film Festival. Take a look at this six-minute clip from the film — it introduces Bill Schaadt and includes interviews with Russell Chatham, Frank Bertaina, Gino Franceschi and other personalities who shaped west coast steelhead fishing as we know it.

Excerpt: "Here's San Francisco. It's 56 miles to Guerneville. And here's this river with 50,000 winter steelhead. I mean, it's an hour drive. Where else is there that kind of steelhead fishing within an hour's drive of a major metropolitan area?"

ANOTHER DAZZLING cinematographic adventure for fly fishers from Chris Patterson and Jim Klug, the producers of "Drift." "RISE" travels to the Florida Keys, Argentina, Alaska, New Orleans, Idaho and Venezuela and profiles anglers, guides and icons in their home waters. This clip features René Harrop — known on the Henry's Fork as the "Trout Hunter" — describing his close connection to one of the most fabled trout streams in North America.

Excerpt: "I think I was destined to be here and to make my life right here. And that's the way it's been. 55 years later I still feel the same excitement, the same surge of energy and the sense of something very special about this place."

"The truest sense of happiness, of joy, is when we're where we want to be, and we're doing what we want to do."

"LET'S START with the issue of hooking fish — with any size hook. The first thing I would say is that most anglers are used to the idea that they need to plan their approach in terms of presentation?staying low enough to keep from spooking the fish, combining angle of approach with casting technique to minimize drag, etc. — but they rarely consider how those angles affect their ability to hook the fish."

RA BEATTIE's new DVD "Nervous Water" is a compilation of all the best work from the filmmaker's five years of shooting fly fishing adventures. With over two-and-a-half hours of video — several longer pieces along with a dozen or so short segments — the DVD is filled with examples of Beattie's ability to frame a fishing scene so that it can't possibly be forgotten. Beattie calls this segment from the DVD "the Redfish Cut." It's a narrative on sightcasting for waking and tailing redfish along the south Texas coastline.