Yesterday's conversation with Davis Bennett — a 21-year-old filmmaker who has been fishing for exactly as long as he has been filming (about two and a half years) — is about how he built a career in the outdoor industry without a conventional path, without film school, and without asking permission. Davis walked away from a management position at UPS, bought a camera, and started driving across Florida every weekend to film people he met on Instagram. Now he is making a living shooting and editing for YouTubers, outdoor brands, and his own Instagram following of over 15,000.
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Davis Bennett is a 21-year-old filmmaker and content creator based in Jupiter, Florida. He specializes in fishing and outdoor lifestyle films and currently works as a filmmaker and editor for Blacktip H on YouTube, while also running his own production business, Davis Bennett Films. He has been fishing and filming for approximately two and a half years and has built an Instagram following of over 15,000.
Davis bought his first camera — a Sony a6300 — and a drone after going fishing twice with a friend from UPS in Jacksonville. He had never been fishing before and had no filming experience. He started traveling every weekend from Jacksonville to different parts of Florida, meeting fishermen through Instagram and filming them for free. Within a year, he was making money from his work and had moved to St. Pete to film full-time.
Davis started with a Sony a6300 and has only owned two cameras total. His first setup cost approximately $2,500 including the lens. He also invested in a DJI Inspire drone early on, bringing his total initial investment to around $5,000.
No. Davis attended USF for one semester while living in St. Pete but never studied film formally. He taught himself by watching other creators like Patrick Ray and Wes Davis, then practiced by filming anything he could — including a video of his brother walking to the mailbox with a pen, which he used as a challenge to make something mundane look cinematic.
Davis combines modern music, heavy use of slow motion (240 frames per second), and a perspective that appeals to younger audiences. His style is intentionally different from traditional outdoor television — some people find it controversial, but his generation responds to it. He focuses on creating one-minute Instagram trailers that hook viewers emotionally rather than telling the full story.
Davis works full-time as a filmmaker and editor for Josh from Blacktip H, a major fishing YouTube channel. He also runs his own business, Davis Bennett Films, and creates content for Reef and Ledge, an outdoor apparel brand. He films and edits six to seven days a week, often starting at 5:30 a.m. and working until late evening.
Davis was promoted from a loader to a supervisor and then to a manager at UPS by age 19, overseeing five supervisors and 60 employees. He was successful and making good money, but he saw a passion in filmmaking and fishing that he wanted to pursue. After posting a recap video from a Keys trip with friends, he realized he had found what he wanted to do and left UPS to film full-time.
My son Hayden kept showing me Davis's videos. Over and over. I would look at his phone and see these short films that felt and looked different from anything else I was seeing in the fishing world at the time. I am in the business. I have been producing outdoor television for twenty years. I watch a lot of content. Davis's work stood out immediately.
What made it more interesting was that I had no idea who he was. Hayden just kept showing me the Instagram posts. The cinematography was clean, the editing was tight, and the perspective was fresh. It did not look like the work of someone who had been doing this for a decade. It looked polished, intentional, and different.
When I finally reached out to Davis and learned that he had been filming for less than two years — and had been fishing for the same amount of time — I did not believe him. I thought he was underselling himself. But he was not. He bought his first camera two and a half years ago. He went fishing for the first time two and a half years ago. Everything you see in his work is the result of two years of obsessive repetition, travel, and self-teaching.
I wanted him on the show because I think his story is the blueprint for how someone who loves something can build a career around it without waiting for permission. He did not go to film school. He did not work his way up through an internship. He bought a camera, met people on Instagram, and drove across the state every weekend to film them. That is how it happened.
Davis started working at UPS while he was a senior in high school. He was 17 years old, making $8.50 an hour, unloading boxes from trucks that had been sitting in the Florida sun all day. He would go to school, then work from four in the afternoon until eleven at night. The work was brutal — hot, physical, repetitive.
Within a year, he was promoted to supervisor. A year and a half after that, he was promoted to manager. At 19 years old, Davis was managing five supervisors and 60 employees. Most of those employees were older than him — some were in their forties. I asked him how a 19-year-old manages a 40-year-old, and his answer was simple: they have to like you, and they have to know you have their best interest in mind.
Davis credits a book his dad gave him — Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People — for teaching him how to lead. He read it before he started at UPS and applied it immediately. He is reading it again now. The lesson that stuck with him most was this: never go to a man's office for an interview if you do not know anything about that man. Know your people. Care about them outside of work. Reward them for their effort. If you do that, they will work for you.
That skillset — managing people, making quick decisions under pressure, earning trust — became the foundation for how Davis runs his business now. He left UPS to chase filmmaking, but the discipline he learned there is part of why he is succeeding now.
Davis had never been fishing. Not once. He put a hot dog on a hook in his backyard pond as a kid and caught a catfish with his dad, but that was it. Then a friend from UPS asked him if he wanted to go out on Clapboard Creek in Jacksonville and catch some redfish. Davis said yes.
They went out twice. Davis caught a small redfish — 23, 24 inches — and thought it was the coolest thing he had ever done. He started watching fishing videos on Instagram, mostly from creators like Patrick Ray and Wes Davis. He thought their content was really cool. He thought, "That is something I really want to do."
So he bought a camera. A Sony a6300, a lens, and a DJI Inspire drone. Total investment: around $5,000. His parents were supportive, even though it came out of nowhere. Davis had been moving up at UPS. He was in college. He was following a conventional path. Then he decided to spend every penny he had on camera gear and start filming fishermen he did not know.
The problem was that Davis did not know how to fish. He had been out twice. So he started meeting people on Instagram — fishermen all over Florida who knew what they were doing — and asked if he could film them. He would work at UPS Monday through Friday, leave at midnight on Friday, drive to Miami or Tampa or the Keys or Fort Pierce, and film all weekend. Then he would drive back to Jacksonville Monday morning and go to work at five.
He did that for thirty weekends straight. That is how he learned to fish. That is how he learned to film. That is how he built his portfolio.
Davis remembers the exact moment he knew this was what he was supposed to be doing. He had shot a recap video from a trip to the Keys with three friends — Ryan, Luke, and Paul. He edited it, posted it on Instagram, and watched it back. He thought, "That's it."
The comments came in fast. People said it was different. Some people loved it. Some people hated it — Davis uses modern music, heavy slow motion, and a style that skews younger. It is not traditional outdoor television. It is not meant to be. But the majority of people responded to it, and Davis stuck with it.
He started getting offers to make content for money. He realized he could transfer to USF, move to St. Pete, and do this full-time. He stayed with the Rogers family — Matt, Christie, Jake, and Noah — for almost a year. They took him in, fed him, let him figure out his path. He went to USF for one semester, then stopped. By that point, he was filming and fishing full-time.
A year later, Josh from Blacktip H offered him a job as a part-time editor. Davis did not want to leave St. Pete, but he knew it was the right move. He moved to Jupiter and has been working for Josh ever since, while still running his own business on the side.
I asked Davis what he thinks makes his work different. He said it comes down to two things: he knows what his audience likes, and he withholds the payoff. A lot of people like fishing. A lot of people also like modern music, slow motion, and content that feels more like a movie trailer than a how-to video. Davis combines both.
He also uses a lot of 240-frames-per-second slow motion, which was newer when he started. He looks back now and thinks he could have done some things better, but at the time, it worked. It was new. It kept people engaged.
What I notice in his work is the perspective. It does not look like traditional outdoor content. It feels more cinematic, more intentional. I asked him if he was influenced by anything outside of fishing — directors, movies, other types of content. He said he picks up small things from everything he watches, even if it has nothing to do with fishing, and pieces them together in his own work.
One of his early exercises was filming his brother walking to the mailbox with a pen. That was it. His goal was to make the coolest possible video of someone doing the most mundane task imaginable. He succeeded. He realized that if he could make that interesting, he could make a tarpon jump interesting. Or anything else.
Davis is learning how to make episodes, not just trailers. When he started, he made one-minute Instagram videos. That was his entire body of work. Now he is creating full YouTube episodes for Blacktip H, which means learning how to structure a story over ten or fifteen minutes instead of sixty seconds.
Josh has taught him timing, pacing, and how to make an episode flow. Davis still loves making the thirty-second trailers that open each episode — that is where his one-minute Instagram style lives — but the long-form work is new territory. He is also learning how to operate bigger rigs, more complex camera setups, and more advanced post-production techniques.
At the same time, Davis is still running his own business. He films content for Reef and Ledge, an apparel brand on the West Coast, which means splitting time between Jupiter and St. Pete. He gets to see his friends on the West Coast, film for a brand he likes, and keep his own creative work separate from his job with Josh. It is a lot of travel, but he does not mind. He adapted to it the same way he adapted to thirty straight weekends driving across Florida when he was just starting out.
Davis's day has no routine. Some days he is up at 3:30 a.m. to leave for a shoot. Some days he is filming until dark, then editing until he crashes. Other days he edits Josh's content from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., then edits his own business content from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. It is film, edit, film, edit, film, edit. That is the pattern.
He has been living out of his truck, on couches, and in spare bedrooms since he left Jacksonville. He stayed with the Rogers in St. Pete for almost a year. He is staying with Paul Cuffaro in Jupiter now while he looks for an apartment. He was in the process of getting a place in St. Pete when the job with Josh came through, so he put it on hold and moved to Jupiter instead.
He misses St. Pete. The fishing is more diverse — there is always something to target year-round, even if it is just inshore gags on the docks in winter. He also has more friends there. Jupiter is more isolated for him. When he is in Jupiter, it is just work. When he travels back to St. Pete or Jacksonville or Naples, it is a break. He gets to see his friends, fish with people he knows, and step away from the grind.
But he is not complaining. He works long hours, travels constantly, and has no fixed routine. But he is doing exactly what he wanted to do. He left a good job at UPS because he did not enjoy the work, even though he was successful at it. Now he films and edits all day, every day, and loves it.
Davis Bennett is 21 years old. He has been fishing for two and a half years. He has been filming for two and a half years. He is making a living doing both. That timeline should not be possible, but it is, and the reason it worked is because Davis did not wait.
He did not wait for film school. He did not wait for an internship. He did not wait for someone to give him permission. He bought a camera, drove across the state every weekend, and met people who were doing what he wanted to learn. He showed up, pressed record, and got better every single time.
What I respect most about his story is the work ethic. He worked brutal hours at UPS as a teenager, got promoted twice, and walked away from a real career to chase something he had only tried twice. Then he worked just as hard — harder, probably — to build his filmmaking business from zero. Thirty weekends in a row, leaving at midnight on Friday, filming all weekend, driving back Monday morning to go to work at five. That is not a casual commitment. That is obsession.
If you are young and you want to do something in the outdoor industry, Davis's story is the template. You do not need a degree. You do not need connections. You need a camera, a willingness to travel, and the discipline to show up every single weekend until someone notices. That is what Davis did. That is why he is here.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page, or scroll back up to watch.
Johnny · Matt Rogers · Christie Rogers · Jake Rogers · Noah Rogers · Paul Cuffaro · Ryan Esquierdo · Patrick Ray · Wes Davis · Josh (Blacktip H) · Rex (Reef and Ledge) · Ryan · Luke · Paul · Dale Carnegie · Hayden Rowland
Davis Bennett is a 21-year-old filmmaker and content creator based in Jupiter, Florida. He specializes in fishing and outdoor lifestyle films and runs Davis Bennett Films while also working as a filmmaker and editor for Blacktip H on YouTube. Davis began fishing and filming two and a half years ago with no prior experience in either and has since built an Instagram following of over 15,000. He is known for a cinematic style that combines modern music, slow motion, and a younger audience perspective. You can find his work on Instagram at @davis_bennett and on the Blacktip H YouTube channel.
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