Sam Root: Building a Fishing Photography Following

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 1003 with Sam Root.

Catching Up After Many Years

Sam: I'm Sam Root, this is the Tom Rowland Podcast, and we've gone back a long way.

Tom: Sam, what's going on, man, how are you?

Sam: Hey, it's good. I'm down in Miami now, where I know you used to live down in the Keys, but otherwise it's going pretty good.

Tom: When I first met you, it was Apollo Beach Sam.

Sam: That's why I used to live in Apollo Beach, and I'm not gonna change my name — it's still Apollo Beach Sam, that's still my email.

Tom: I see some other accounts too under Sam Root.

Sam: Yeah, all this digital marketing and social media stuff wants little pigeonholes for everything you do. I try to keep the fishing part separate from the traveling and other stuff. It's hard to keep up with all of them.

Tom: That's a lesson for me — I bundle everything together and it doesn't work as well. So what have you been up to? You and David McCleaf were the first photographers we ever had come on the show and help us shoot from the camera boat, and that was a totally new thing for us — I saw the future of social media and knew we needed that kind of content. What have you been doing since?

Sam: That was 2008 or 2009 or so. Back then I wasn't even in the industry — you found me on a random forum somewhere and hit me up, and I used to watch your show. You actually got me started in the fishing industry business. Since then, David's had kids and gotten married; I went the opposite direction, got divorced, and moved down to Miami. Right now my job is with Pure Fishing, literally the largest fishing-specific company in the world — I've been with them since 2022. It's great to be in the industry, but like anything, the more involved you get, the less you actually fish. You get to talk about it, write about it, make videos about it, but you don't always get to fish, same as when you become a successful fishing guide — you almost fish zero yourself.

How Social Media and Content Marketing Have Changed

Tom: You've seen a lot of twists and turns in the social media landscape as it relates to fishing. Where I found you was on a forum — you'd shoot photos, write an article, and it did really well by the standards of the day. What do you think have been the biggest changes?

Sam: The biggest change is the gatekeeping that used to exist. Back then the big four were still television, radio, magazines, and newspapers, and three-quarters of that is basically gone now. Now pretty much anyone in the industry can grow if the market likes their product. I watch you keep an eye on all this — TikTok, Instagram, short video, long video, online content — and I see the most change in how fast the algorithms shift. One minute it's short videos, the next it's long videos, then long podcasts, then ten-second snippets. You look at your analytics and think, nobody's watching more than three seconds, why am I making one-minute videos? Attention spans are shrinking — myself included, I can barely watch a ten-second video now if it doesn't catch me in the first couple of seconds.

Tom: But I feel like as attention spans shrink for short things, they also grow for longer things — the most popular podcast in the world is three hours long, and people listen every single day. It's either three hours or three seconds, one or the other.

What Actually Drives Sales in Content Marketing

Tom: How did you end up at Pure Fishing, and what do you do there? You've seen a lot of evolutions in what drives sales and engagement.

Sam: I started with a two-megapixel Nikon camera before digital cameras even really existed, right as camera phones were showing up, and I'd figure out how to post pictures with my forum posts. So when social media came around, I already had a stack of photos, which helped me get noticed by you, get to know David McCleaf, get into the magazines. Now everybody has a phone and the ability to do podcasts, video, TikTok, CapCut — I got in the industry early, which gives an advantage the same way being first in any market does. If I had to start today, it would be a much tougher road; you'd need real value to bring to the table, the way a long podcast like Joe Rogan's works because it delivers value despite the length. I bring value to Pure Fishing because I create content in the marine sports fishing industry at a fraction of what a marketing agency would charge for the same video.

Tom: You're actually making the content for the largest fishing company on the planet — what actually drives sales through content these days?

Sam: The only thing I see with a massive impact is a brand-new product — every fishing geek and social media person wants to try new things first, so almost any video does well if it's about something new. But once that new-product phase wears off, the product actually has to work, and credibility becomes a huge part of it. From my own analytics, a $100,000 high-end production video gets less engagement than someone just throwing a lure in a pond and showing the action, especially once the new-product excitement fades.

Tom: Why do you think that is? I've had the same conversation with Rob recently.

Sam: I look at myself as a consumer too — I started as a fishing guy, and once you're behind the scenes long enough, you realize you can catch fish on almost anything. Everything's based on marketing, and people are getting wise to it. The fancier a video looks, the more it looks like an ad to me, and about half of my Instagram and TikTok feed is ads that I scroll right past. But when I see something that looks like an organic security-camera clip about to catch something crazy happening, I stop — nothing's being sold to me, it's an actual event. The moment I see a boat backing in with slow-motion water droplets off the trailer, I move on, unless it's something I'm already interested in.

Tom: There's also the algorithm itself — the platforms. One theory is that high-end videos get throttled because the platforms figure that's a business that should pay for distribution.

Sam: Except even when you do pay, engagement is next to nothing. On YouTube you can upload the highest-end video you want and it often doesn't get much love either. We've had the same challenge with our full-length TV show on YouTube — it's never done that well despite being pre-edited with lots of legwork. Meanwhile, food and travel channels I watch get millions of views on Shorts but only a couple thousand on a beautifully produced thirty-minute long-form video with tons of transitions and editing, while a thirty-second short from the same channel gets hundreds of thousands. YouTube isn't watching the video itself, it's watching the interaction with the video.

Tom: I've heard that putting a viral short on your main long-form channel can actually hurt it, since a fifteen-second, 100%-watch-time short skews your average watch time compared to a fifteen-minute video with a fifteen-minute average.

Sam: It's quite possible, though technically that's still 100% watch time on a percentage basis for the short. It could also be a demographics thing — younger viewers with short attention spans stick to shorts, while people who subscribed for long-form content, which is a shrinking group, watch the long-form.

Travel — Indonesia, Colombia, and Remote Fishing

Tom: Where have you had an interesting trip lately?

Sam: Indonesia is one of my favorites — 17,000 islands, and there are places that have never been fished with a rod and reel, maybe just hand lines. You have to work with the local tribe on each island, get an interpreter, get permission, and the fishing swings from incredible one day to dead the next, the same as anywhere — I learned that here in the Everglades too, where one day the fish are jumping in the boat and the next it's slow for no obvious reason.

Tom: How much time have you spent there?

Sam: About four trips — some mothership trips, organized and more remote with better fish since they're not overfished, and some with local guys, which are cheaper but yield fewer trophy fish since some of those countries have no fishing regulations. Giant trevally are very popular there, plus coral trout and a fish like Spanish mackerel in the Pacific.

Tom: I just got back from the Seychelles and got humbled treating giant trevally like jack crevalle — they're not the same. The water's much clearer, their eyesight seems sharper, and they're incredibly aggressive when they turn on, but also incredibly spooky, almost like permit. If you cast too close, they just leave — not a panicked bolt, just a decision they don't like it here anymore. Meanwhile the worst fly casters in our group, whose flies drifted well off to the side, caught the biggest fish because the GTs came forty or fifty feet to eat it. Once I finally cast far away from the fish and gave it one twitch, a GT came at full speed from sixty feet and crushed it.

Sam: They want to find it — they don't want to see it or see you.

Tom: Right, and even though our water in the Keys looks clear from the surface, GoPro footage shows a lot of particulate matter once you're actually in it, versus the Seychelles, which was rock-bottom clear with almost no sediment.

Sam: That's probably the estuary — the Keys and Everglades are basically an estuary full of runoff and nutrients, while Indonesia, Australia, and the Seychelles are mostly just rock, without much floating around.

The Full Experience, Not Just the Fishing

Tom: Do you like the travel and the whole experience as much as the fishing itself?

Sam: I like the food, the culture, all of it — it makes a good story. If you just get teleported somewhere and skip all that, you miss the stuff you actually remember, like the time we got caught in a storm and it took twenty-eight hours in a rickety old mothership to get back to shore, boat creaking, having to cut loose and leave a smaller boat in the water because it kept flipping in the waves. We were about 120 miles from the nearest shoreline. When it got that sketchy, we mostly survived on instant noodles and boiled eggs cooked in small portions — the Indonesian crew really know how to handle those situations. One morning in a place called Fak Fak, West Papua, New Guinea, someone showed up with about a hundred sea turtle eggs, which is totally illegal, but I was a guest, and they were excellent — like small round quail eggs, about 90% yolk, simmered over low heat until soft, then you just squeeze them into your mouth like a soft-boiled egg. Coconut crabs out there were excellent too, like stone crab with a hint of coconut, though their claws are strong enough to open a coconut, so they're not something to handle carelessly.

Tom: Being adventurous with local food and water can be risky, though — on trips to places like Christmas Island, people get sick even when they're drinking bottled water, often from something as simple as ice, or wiping the top of a bottled drink, or brushing their teeth with tap water without thinking about it.

Sam: I'm pretty good with most of that stuff, partly from having eaten a lot of different foods throughout my life.

Fly Fishing Versus Spin Fishing as Tools

Sam: You like to fly fish yourself, right?

Tom: I like it, but it's not everything — for a long stretch of my career it was all fly, but these days I think of every method as just a tool. On my recent Seychelles trip I would have loved a spinning rod, since it wasn't allowed and you'd cover way more ground and catch a lot more fish, but I'll fly fish when fly fishing is the best option, and I don't feel obligated to it otherwise. I'd rather throw a crab at a permit than a fly at a permit these days — I just like catching them.

Sam: Fly fishing does add a challenge when you want one. I've traveled with Rob Chapman to the Bahamas to wade for bonefish, and I'd bring a seven-weight fly rod while he brought a spinning rod with a jig head and old shrimp — he couldn't believe I was out-catching him on the fly rod. In really shallow water, even supposedly dumb Bahamas bonefish get wise to a lure presentation fast, but you can put a fly in front of them repeatedly without spooking them the same way.

Tom: Those are exactly the situations where fly fishing shines — like out west during a good hatch on a trout river, where you'll outfish a bait angler standing right next to you a hundred to one. But other times it's not the way to go, which is part of why we've kept our fishing show flexible across fly, spin, bait, and trolling — some days lures are the real challenge, other days it's fly, other days it's bait, and keeping our options open has made filming more efficient.

Sam: I've worked with corporate clients who don't fish and hand me an impossible shot list — a grizzly bear attacking a moose in a spot locals have never seen that happen in their whole lives, or four or five 50-inch muskies, which is realistically once-in-a-lifetime territory.

Using AI in Content Creation

Tom: That's a good segue to AI — it's probably possible now to generate something like a grizzly attacking a moose convincingly. How much are you using AI?

Sam: Quite a bit, even though I'm not paying for anything yet — it's still the wild west and mostly free if you figure it out. I use it to fix still photos, extend sky to match shadows, sharpen focus. It's not as strong yet specifically for fishing content because there isn't enough training data for that niche the way there is for other subjects. I also use it to animate old photos into short clips — drop in a still of a yellowfin boat running on plane back in the day, and tools like Google's Nano Banana will generate a high-res 1080p, roughly seven-second clip of it running, which is plenty good for social clips and B-roll.

Tom: That's incredible — I haven't tried Nano Banana yet, but I've seen clips coming out of it. Where do you think this goes? It feels like early adopters will get away with it for a while before people start calling everything out as AI.

Sam: Like the wave of AI-narrated YouTube channels already — I block every single one. Same monotonous narration, often the same voice, stolen clips, all just padding to a five-or-ten-minute ad break for revenue. I click on a lot of them just to check the data, and most only have around a thousand subscribers for all that effort — a lot of work for very little payoff.

Upcoming Trips and Amazon Fishing in Colombia

Tom: What's on your plate this year?

Sam: Not much travel-wise except a December shoot for Berkley up in Tampa, which is just a driving trip. Have you been to the Amazon?

Tom: I haven't — it's a big hole in my fishing career. I'd love to go, but I keep prioritizing other trips like Alaska.

Sam: My Amazon trip was actually in Colombia, which has only opened back up to fishing in the last decade or so after being closed due to the drug cartels. You fly into Bogotá, take a short hop to a small town, then a seven-hour boat ride up the river to a base camp, fishing different areas by small boat with fly, spin, or bait casting. I like that particular location because, unlike a lot of rivers where one stretch favors one species, you can catch peacock bass, payara, giant catfish including redtail and other species, all in one place — probably my favorite South American experience. You bring all your own bass-style tackle; they only provide food and lodging, basically FEMA tents, though Starlink now means you can post pictures from the middle of the jungle, miles from the nearest town.

Tom: How heavy does your tackle need to be for those giant catfish?

Sam: They get up to 400 pounds down there, murky water, no visibility, so you're fishing bait on the bottom. There's a lot of submerged branches too since the river shifts twenty feet every season. We've been to that location three times and still haven't landed anything over 50 pounds — the truly big ones just cut us off before we ever see them.

Variety Versus Single-Species Destinations

Tom: I love a location where you can target one species but still have other options — that's what I like so much about the Keys. Even during prime tarpon season, if the bite's off you can go offshore, reef fish, hit redfish and snook in the Everglades. Some destinations don't have a plan B — the best bonefishing in the world, but that's basically all there is to do.

Sam: Kind of like ice cream — you can eat a pound of it, but after that you're done for a week. That reminds me of a trip to Argentina — nine hours to Buenos Aires, three more hours to another city, ten hours by bus, then two more hours on dirt roads to reach two man-made mountain lakes with the most epic rainbow trout fishing you'll ever see, except every fish was two to four pounds and it was almost too easy — cast out, bend down to tie your shoe, and you'd already have a bite. After three days of that I was bored and ready to go home; there was no electricity, no internet, nothing else to do but fish or look at the scenery. Someone had actually imported trout from England there hoping to build a camp, but with no predators the fish became so overpopulated they started showing deformities.

Tom: What's the longest trip you've ever taken?

Sam: The Indonesia trip — thirty hours to Jakarta, five hours to West Papua New Guinea, then fifteen hours by boat before we even started fishing, through a company called Solid Adventure in one of their experimental GT locations. It was gorgeous, crystal clear water, one of the top diving destinations in the world, moving to a different island every two days. We were mostly throwing poppers without much gear for the flats we saw, since we weren't really set up for it — this was 2016, before I was as dialed in as I am now, so I can only imagine the jigging potential for fish that had never seen a lure.

Tom: I can imagine it — in the Seychelles, on the way back from the flats, since spinning rods weren't allowed, the guides rigged our fly rods with a straight piece of 50-pound leader, an egg sinker, and just dropped it to the bottom wherever we stopped. Every drop near the bottom produced a big bite — all kinds of grouper and fish we'd never caught before. It made me think that's probably what the Keys were like two hundred years ago.

Why Some Fisheries Ban Spinning Rods

Tom: I asked our guide there if they ever spin fish, and he said not anymore — they used to, but it taught them a lesson about protecting the fishery. With a lure you can cast 300 feet, and as you retrieve it you draw every GT in the area to the boat, exposing the whole population to that pressure, whereas with a fly, even the best caster is limited to around 80 feet, often wading waist deep, so far fewer fish ever get near the boat.

Sam: I've noticed something similar in the Everglades — in just the ten years I've been fishing there, pressure has increased enormously, even during COVID when everyone bought a boat. The fishing slowed down noticeably, and now you really have to know what you're doing; you can't just show up and catch a hundred snook anymore.

The Shark Explosion

Tom: The snook fishing itself still seems as good as ever, but what brought us back together for this podcast was your video of a tarpon release with what looked like a bull or tiger shark right underneath it. I've noticed a huge increase in sharks throughout the Everglades and around the Keys — you can leave the dock anywhere and go two hours in any direction and see the same thing.

Sam: That doesn't line up with the idea that sharks just got smarter about boats — I've done deep-water fishing at 500 to 700 feet, and they're out there in force too, with no boats around to learn from. Compared to fifteen years ago when I fished with you, there are way more sharks now, period — in the last five years you can barely land a big snook without a shark showing up, especially in the summer when they're up on the beach.

Tom: There are different theories. Chris Fischer thinks it's actually a sign of a healthy fishery — sharks wouldn't be this abundant and aggressive if there weren't plenty for them to eat, meaning the bait and the fishery overall are thriving. I tend to agree; the fishing in a lot of places seems as good as I've ever seen it, you just have to navigate around the sharks.

Sam: I still don't think it's that individual sharks got smarter — I know guys who fish the Elbow who can barely land anything because of how many sharks are on the boat, and they're not selectively targeting educated fish, they're just everywhere in 800 feet of water.

Tom: On the day you shot that tarpon video, had you already seen other sharks around?

Sam: Yes — that was right around shark hour at sunset, and I had to adjust the contrast on the footage just to make the shark visible at all, since with polarized glasses in person it was barely noticeable, even though I was actively watching for it. It faded in and out so stealthily.

Tom: That tracks — flats fishing is like that; someone says there's a redfish right there and you can't see it until you stand up two feet higher on the cooler. Camera angle versus eye level changes everything, especially in low light.

Sam: And speaking of smart sharks, whatever showed up under that tarpon had clearly been around boats before — it looked at the guy's hand, sensed something was off about that fish, and swam away without eating it.

Tom: There's also the famous video of a guy in the Everglades releasing a redfish, dipping just his pinky in the water afterward, and a shark grabbing his hand in that instant.

Sam: That changes everything for releasing fish. On my side-scan I can literally watch sharks circling the boat once you start handling a small snook. I've learned that if I put the fish in an aluminum landing net, the sharks won't come near it — they can sense the metal — so now I don't even go near culverts without a landing net, since hand-landing a big fish in that kind of water is genuinely risky.

Tom: I've never seen one eat a landing net, but I bet they will if they get riled up enough.

Sam: I had a cobia come aboard so worked up that it slammed my trolling motor and broke the bracket clean off — a four-thousand-dollar trolling motor I had to get repaired.

Rapid Fire

Tom: Alright Sam, we're closing in on time — rapid fire questions. Furthest destination you've ever traveled to fish?

Sam: Roughly a forty-five hour trip before we even started fishing, for that remote Indonesia location.

Tom: Shortest trip that produced some of the best fishing you've ever had?

Sam: The Everglades, hands down — the most convenient, best all-around fishing in the world. It's highly protected, the fishing is excellent, and it's still only about a four-minute drive from the gate to launch a boat, with all the modern conveniences of internet, hotels, and food nearby.

Tom: Worst trip you've ever been on?

Sam: The year after an epic trip to Panama, we invited a big group along with all the gear and cameras, and it blew 30 miles an hour for five straight days — all we caught were jacks and needlefish, unable to go anywhere.

Tom: Strangest fish you've ever caught?

Sam: In the Amazon we caught five different species of catfish in one outing — there are over 3,000 catfish species native to the Amazon, from microscopic to 400 pounds, including armored catfish whose Spanish names I never even learned.

Tom: If you could replicate one trip exactly, which would it be?

Sam: My first Indonesian trip — it was so remote, the scenery was incredible, and I was a total novice back then who'd never even popped a fish before, yet still caught plenty. I'd love to go back now with everything I know today.

Tom: One location still on your bucket list?

Sam: Tough one — the Seychelles is up there given how remote and good the fishing is. But if I have to pick somewhere I've never been, it would be dogtooth tuna fishing in East Papua New Guinea, those giant 200-pound dogtooth.

Tom: I've caught one of those while slow-trolling toward another destination on a mothership — such a strange, interesting fish, not really a true tuna despite the name. I remember seeing one on a Saltwater Sportsman cover ages ago, held up by the tail with that mouthful of teeth on full display, and thinking it was the coolest-looking fish around.

Sam: It is. I caught one in West Papua, but only about ten pounds — I want the hundred-pounder. They look delicious too.

Closing

Tom: You've had a great career of travel and content creation, and we've shared a lot of your videos over the years — that tarpon jumping clean over the boat was incredible.

Sam: If I hadn't had the camera rolling, nobody would have believed me.

Tom: I've only ever had something similar happen once, filming with Chad Foster's show, Fly Fishing America, right outside Key West — a hooked fish jumped clean between two anglers standing on the boat and skipped across the deck. Yours was a free jumper, which is the stranger version — a hooked fish jumping through the boat at least makes some sense.

Sam: You're the one who really got the ball rolling for me in this industry, directly or indirectly.

Tom: You would have done just fine on your own.

Sam: You never know — life is about timing. Good times back then with you and David too.

Tom: Tell people how they can find and follow you.

Sam: Look me up on Instagram — Sam Root, R-O-O-T. Easy enough.

Tom: Sam Root, thanks, man. Great catching up with you, we'll do this again.

Sam: Alright, brother, take care.