Go Fish: how Jamie Pistilli became a fishing star | Ottawa Magazine

by Ottawa Magazine Staff

The day, September 12, 2009, started early for him — 4:30 a.m. — when he hooked up with a video crew at a boat launch on the Ottawa River. The crew was making a movie about kayak fishing and had been convinced to go fishing with Pistilli, an up-and-comer in the sport.

The video crew was after muskies. The editor thought a muskie (more a monster than a fish) being caught would make good footage. The movie was going to be called Kayak Fishing: Game On. So Pistilli took them to the Ottawa River. He fished for three hours and didn’t get so much as a bite. “I was sweating bullets,” he remembers. “I could see they were losing interest in the whole idea. So I decided to be bold.” Pistilli told them there were better places to catch muskies, that they needed to pack up and move. That stunt kept the crew members hanging around for a few more hours as they drove to the Madawaska River, near Arnprior. There they fished in the rain for another three hours.

As dusk fell, there was almost a mutiny among the crew, who had had enough and wanted to head back to the city. Then — imagine it as a movie, shifting suddenly to slow motion — Pistilli yelled, “Last cast.” He arced his rod back and sent a lure sailing through the twilit sky. The lure hit the water, and Pistilli began a slow retrieval. The muskie struck four feet from the boat. It was a monster — nearly 20 pounds, easily — and as it broke the surface of the water, the video crew scrambled back into position.

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