Larry Dahlberg is at home on camera, and on water

Fishing is not unlike other sports, except that for many Minnesotans fishing is more lifestyle than sport. It's in the water. The state has lots of it. And while some residents dabble atop it in boats and others casually cast lines from docks, the same water has quite a different effect on others, transforming them from casual bait chuckers to true anglers, and from true anglers to elite anglers.¶ Larry Dahlberg, who will appear Saturday in two seminars at the Northwest Sportshow, is a case in point. Water and fish so mesmerized him as a kid that by the time most of his playmates were asking for 50-cent bumps in their allowances, he was guiding for real money. And with a fly rod.

Today, in his middling to late 50s and the star of his TV show, "The Hunt for Big Fish," he's still at it, though in such a preposterously gargantuan way the only explanation can be that, well, he's a Minnesotan.

"I didn't really plan any of it," Dahlberg said the other day. "Like a knuckleball headed toward home plate, I took the path of least resistance."

A digression here.

A couple of years ago, my eldest son, then age 12, and I were in Colorado hunting elk with bows. We were headquartered in a small encampment at about 10,000 feet. The handful of other archers in camp were from Georgia.

One morning at breakfast my son asked the man across the table whether he and his friends ever watched outdoors TV shows.

"Sa-on," the man drawled in return. "That's owl we watch."

As one viewer wrote on Dahlberg's website, (www.huntforbigfish.com), "Love to watch you catch those pigs."

Added another: "Those tarpon episodes (off West Africa) rock."

Shown at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays on the Versus network, "The Hunt for Big Fish" is bizarre in its concept, depicting a kind of fishing most who watch will never get to attempt.

Yet the show pulls big-time ratings, in part because its plot line appeals to an angler's basest impulse -- something like, come watch our star angler fend off weird bugs, elephantine crocodiles and electric eels while he catches some of the world's biggest and often ugliest fish.

Come they do, cult-like.

He thought he could do his own TV show and from the outset was comfortable co-starring with monster fish.

"Ever since I was a kid, that's what tripped my trigger, big fish," he said.

Dahlberg cut a demo and sent it to ESPN. For a long while he heard nothing.

Then one day he received a fax saying he should come to New York immediately.

"I signed the deal for the show at the airport," he said, "and never looked back."

"That was one of my favorite trips, to Egypt, where we camped along the Nile on a sand beach beneath the stars," he said. "In ways we were living among people in a culture that is 2,000 years behind ours. And I was catching these giant Nile perch up to 200 pounds."

Often, little or no angling infrastructure exists at Dahlberg's destinations. No guides. No translators. Sometimes no boats or motors.

When this occurs he makes do on the fly. Which is part of the show's appeal.

"I was in Suriname a couple of years ago and one day I was looking at a map and decided to run upriver to a spot that looked like it might hold giant catfish," he said. "It was 250 river miles one way and took us 2 1/2 days to get there. But I caught an 8 1/2- foot-long catfish."

Dahlberg travels with one of a handful of Twin Cities-based free-lance videographers he employs to film his exploits. He rough-edits the video himself before turning the job over to a pro to produce the 22 minutes needed for a half-hour show.

Naturally, he's from Minnesota.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com