OK, we’ll say it: Many of the films on the international tour circuits are incredibly same-same. The same kinds of people doing the same kinds of fly fishing, shot in the same kinds of ways. That’s why Grasshopper, a new film set to be released at the 2026 F3T, seems like such a breath of fresh air. A “frothy swoffer”, swimming out to rocks along a wild coastline to catch Aussie salmon on fly? Now that sounds like box office to us. We sat down with the subject of the film, Jackson Murray, and filmmakers Gareth Shrubb and Jesse Wallace to find out what they got up to.  

As sports go, fly fishing is but a niche in the general fishing landscape. Even then, within fly fishing, we separate and subdivide like antisocial amoeba into smaller tribes and even more specific niches. Some of us are into multiple branches of fly fishing, while others hyper-specialise. As for people who swim out and fly fish off remote rocks along wild coastlines for pelagic fish, it’s a very small club. Jackson Murray (aka Muzz), an Australian angler with Seffrican roots, belongs to it. Gareth Shrubb (aka Gazza) and Jesse Wallace (possibly aka Jizza) teamed up with Jackson to make a film. 

How do you guys know each other? What’s the glue on this project? 

Jackson: So, I originally went to the F3T Film Festival last year at The Fly Fisher, the local fly shop that hosted it here in Melbourne. I went into the store the next day and Andrew Fuller, the owner, was like, “Why don’t you make a film?” I thought about it overnight and decided if I’m going to do it, I want it to be done properly and I want to work with people who will capture it the right way. I did a bit of research online and spent some time figuring out who would be the right fit. I came across Gazza’s page and I saw that he and Jesse had done stuff together and shot him a message. He phoned me the same day and it sort of just kicked off from there. 

Gareth: Jesse and I are both ex-military. So that’s where we first came to meet each other. I got out of the service in 2019 and Jesse got out in 2022. I got back into filming full time and when Jesse, who lives not too far from me, exited, I saw him putting up some outdoor photos. Over the last two years, we have worked on a lot of outdoor content together. 

Pelagics Off The Rocks On Fly – Bending with Muzz

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Jackson, what do you do? I assume fly fishing off the rocks doesn’t pay the bills. 

Jackson: No, unfortunately not. I wish it would. I run a small social media agency. A brand will come to me and say we don’t know what to do on socials. I’ll build a strategy, create the content and post it for them. A lot of it is video work for socials. The long-form documentary style is well out of my league. 

For Grasshopper, how much planning went into the shooting?  

Jackson: The whole process started about nine months ago when we put together a deck that outlined the concept for the film and what we wanted to showcase. Then we reached out to brands that we thought would want to partner with the project. We then picked Victoria and almost the whole southern coastline for the first shoot in April last year, which is the best time to fish for the salmon. Then we did another trip this year based around in New South Wales (NSW) at around the same time. 

I know you get Aussie salmon all along the Australian coast, but is Victoria as well known for salmon as say Western Australia? 

Jackson: No, definitely not. Victoria is probably the least fishy state in Australia. There’s not much here. That said, in the last five years I’ve been fishing for them, I’ve sort of worked out the Aussie salmon patterns here in Vic. We get both Western Australian salmon and Eastern Australian salmon. They’re two separate sub-species. The Western Australian ones are typically bigger. They get up to around the 20lb-plus mark and they will spawn offshore and come inshore around February until the end of May in WA (Western Australia). That’s when you see these monsters getting caught in that salmon run. Occasionally a fair few travel down past South Australia into Victoria, which is what I’ll sometimes hook up to. Then you have the Eastern Australian salmon which get up to around the 12-15lb mark. They are really prominent in NSW where we just finished fishing and they also make their way down to Victoria to breed in the inlets and estuaries. Fortunately, in Victoria, we get both species. They sort of meet here, spawn and then go their separate ways. 

Read the full interview behind the unreleased film, Grasshopper, in issue 54 of The Mission below. It’s free!

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