Bob Asbury spends countless hours at some of the Wests premier fishing spots, yet rarely finds the time to drop a line in the water, let alone hook a big rainbow or steelhead.


Thats because, as producer, director, and photographer for the Liberty Lake-based Columbia Country sport-fishing TV show, which is about to enter its fourth broadcast season, hes too busy filming someone else catching fish.


Everybody thinks I fish all over the place. I dont fish at all. You never have enough footage, Asbury says, grinning. Not being the one with the bowed fishing rod in his hand doesnt disappoint him terribly, though. In a way, he says, I get as much satisfaction out of shooting it.


Asbury distributes his half-hour show to more than 40 TV stationsup from 13 in its debut seasonthrough Sun West Productions, a company he owns and operates from his Liberty Lake home with two part-time employees.


The show is broadcast here on Sundays at 4 p.m. on KAYU-TVs Fox 28. It now has strong penetration throughout the Pacific Northwest, and Asbury says hes looking to extend its presence to such major markets as Denver, Salt Lake City, and the San Francisco Bay Area.


He announced earlier this year that Columbia Country would expand its coverage throughout the West through a licensing pact with a Denver-based cable network called Altitude Sports & Entertainment network that planned to launch service this fall. Asbury says plans for that network now appear indefinite, but the setback hasnt weakened his expansion ambitions.


He launched Columbia Country as a Northwest-focused show, deriving its name from the fact that many of the regions top fishing rivers flow into the Columbia River, but says he quickly realized that such an emphasis was too limiting.


Now, he says, We truly are a Western show. We cover the top venues of the West.


He and friend Carl Mann, the shows host and a longtime Montana fishing and hunting outfitter, have traveled to fishing locales from Alaska to Utah, he says.


We work through outfitters. Its normally a trade out with them. They get the publicity, and they take us fishing, Asbury says. He and Mann fly to some spots, but he also has a vanwith the big Columbia Country logo emblazoned on its sidesand he says, We cover a lot of miles.


Recently, they were at Hood Canal on the Puget Sound, fishing for sea-run cutthroat trout, and on The Chosen River in Alaska, fly-fishing for silver salmon and leopard rainbow and Dolly Varden trout.


Speaking of The Chosen River with the awed reverence of a true fishing enthusiast, he says, It was the most productive river I think Ive ever been on. It was just full of fish. There were fish everywhere.


Asbury says he and Mann have mostly wrapped up their latest 22-episode shooting season, which runs from April through September, for shows that will begin airing next month and run for a year, counting reruns. The show is shot on Betacam SP, a standard broadcast-industry film format, and covers all types of sport fishing, but probably is about 60 percent devoted to fly fishing, he says.


Asbury says he is on location every other week for about three days during the shooting season. We try to allow two days to shoot a show, and need about six or seven fish (caught) to do a show, he says. The fish arent always cooperative, though, he says. That can throw off scheduling and affect the shows quality, he adds, since he tries to allot a certain amount of time for also getting good footage of wildlife and scenery.


Despite the potential for mishap, given some of the rugged terrain that the two men visit, most shoots have gone smoothly, he says. Ive dropped two cameras in the water, and theyre $40,000 each new, he says, but adds that he snatched them back up before the water could damage them seriously.


Each episode requires about five days to edit, Asbury says. A part-time editor who works for him, Aaron Nepean, kind of roughs it together in a well-equipped editing suite in the basement of Asburys home and I finish it, he says.


Melding two interests


Operating Sun West and producing the Columbia Country show allows Asbury to combine his longtime enjoyment of the outdoors with an equally lengthy enthusiasm for studio production work.


Born and raised in the Spokane Valley, he took some radio-TV classes at Eastern Washington University and operated a recording studio in the Spokane Industrial Park for a number of years, producing jingles for ad agencies and directly for businesses. Thats where Sun West actually originated, in about 1980, he says.


I just always was intrigued with studio recording and commercial music and that sort of thing, he says.


Asbury also is a musician himself, playing banjo and guitar in a bluegrass band here called Custers Grass Band. Weve been around longer than the Rolling Stones, he says, laughing.


He says his production interests grew beyond music after an ad agency owner leased a space next to his studio in the industrial park. He had a deep background in film production. He was always talking film, and he got me interested in film production, Asbury says.


I started studying the whole thing, and meshing my recording studio with film production, which at the time involved old 16-millimeter film and required adding a sound track separately.


Asbury began shooting outdoor videos for the video-rental industry, working with an Oklahoma company that distributed the videos for him. He says that market eventually dried up, though, when the mom-and-pop video rental stores began giving way to chain stores, which were less interested in allocating shelf space to special-interest videos such as the ones he produced.


He then decided to launch and syndicate the Columbia Country show, which he thought would have good potential regionally by focusing on Western species of fish, unlike most nationally broadcast TV fishing shows, and he recruited Mann to host it.


We had talked off and on about doing a show, but never anything serious until then, Asbury says. Hes a very knowledgeable fisherman, and hes fished throughout the West.


The two men started shooting shows before they had any TV stations signed up to broadcast them, because they wanted to have something to show the stations to capture their interest, he says.


Still, the task of convincing stations to use the show turned out to be daunting, due partly to heavy demand for weekend air time, Asbury says.


It was very difficult to get them to even consider a show like ours, Asbury says. We just had some very lucky breaks in that regard.


He now does what he calls a syndicated barter with the stations that broadcast the show, splitting with them the responsibility for selling the advertising to support the show. They sell to local sponsors, and I sell to regional sponsors, he says.


So far, Asbury has been shooting the opening segment of each show in the clubhouse at the Big Trout Lodge apartment complex at Liberty Lake. As a result of a new national sponsorship agreement with the Midvale, Utah-based Sportsmans Warehouse chain, however, he says he plans shortly to begin shooting the openings instead at that chains store near the Spokane Valley Mall.


Asbury says Sun West is profitable, but only because he holds costs down by operating the business from his home and doing much of the work himself.


Its a little bit too much of a one-man show, he says, adding that he hopes to boost revenue from the show enough to hire additional help at some point.


Meanwhile, though, he clearly enjoys what hes doing.


Reflecting appreciatively on how centrally located the Spokane area is among some of the best fishing venues in the U.S. and Canada, he says I feel like I live in one of the best spots to shoot this kind of a show.