Tom Rowland Podcast

Sam Root is a content creator in the fishing industry and a key part of the team at Pure Fishing — one of the biggest fishing companies on the planet. We go way back (forums, early DSLR days, the first years of Saltwater Experience), and in this conversation we get into what’s actually changed in fishing media… and what hasn’t. We talk about the death of gatekeeping, why attention spans are getting weird (3 seconds or 3 hours), why polished “commercial-looking” videos often underperform, how AI is already changing photo/video work, and the wild travel stories that remind you fishing is fishing — whether you’re in the Everglades or 30 hours from the nearest runway. Some of the moments I found most meaningful in this conversation were: The gatekeeping is gone — and that’s a blessing and a whole new kind of grind. High-end production can actually hurt performance because people can smell an ad in half a second. New product hype sells… until it doesn’t — credibility is what carries the long gam