What is fly fishing if not a concerted effort to hamper ourselves at every turn?
I work in a fly shop. I hear and see every opinionated cliché that our beloved little niche sport conjures up. Often it comes from my customers, sometimes from my peers.
“Always fish IGFA tippet.”
“That fly with a spinner blade is so dirty!”
“Euro-nymphing is just Chuck and Duck Lite.”
“Bluefish are trash fish, a striper is a real gamefish.”
For the love of God, just go fishing.
It would be compounded if I were friends with my customers and local guides on Facebook (as many of my coworkers are), but that’s one vitriolic cesspool too many for me. A peer will frequently inquire, “Did you see the rant about [insert technique] that [insert local guide] did on Facebook?” And while I’ve blessedly ensured my answer is always “Nope,” I’m never surprised when my peer relates the gist of the outburst.
We’ve already willingly handicapped ourselves: We’ve taken the proverbial plunge into choosing to throw small, non-bait, handmade bits of feather and fur and tinsel. We’ve already decided that we have to get within 50 feet of our quarry if we’re going to present to them. We’ve already decided that our rods will be lighter-duty, more flexible, less wieldy despite putting ourselves at the mercy of offshore winds. We’ve decided that we’re going to comb the world in search of particularly difficult or hard-to-find fish—eaten by flies, ducking under mangrove arbors, being smacked in the face by tag alders along the way—just to make a cast that requires more room despite a particularly confined space. We’ve done all of this to ourselves; so this oasis of stupid doesn’t need to become a virtual battleground about the best, most traditional, or “highest” methods.
Ethics are a bit different. In my mind, there’s a fairly significant difference between whether or not scenting your fly is actually fly fishing and whether or not a certain fishing practice is better or worse for the resource. When it comes to protecting everything we hold dear and preserving it for future generations, any amount of discussion is good. It keeps the ethics of fishing at the forefront and keeps conservation in our brains. If talking about whether a technique is really fishing at all, or whether it’s snagging—that’s an ethics debate. If you’re talking about whether a particular kind of hook or presentation more frequently results in a deep-hooked or foul-hooked fish, then let’s get into it. I’d love it if everyone spent the time they take arguing about how to fish to talk instead about why to fish, or about how to be a better conservationist, or how to introduce someone to the sport.
I meet many customers who are sheepish about mentioning methods outside of fly fishing. They’ll talk about a great day of fishing and then get a haunted look on their face as they intimate that some of the fish were caught on spin tackle. I can see the inner conflict, the uncertainty or guilt at mentioning conventional gear to a fly-gear guy. I’ll save you the trouble: You caught fish, good for you! And I say that with no sarcasm. You went out and fished, and that’s better than the person sitting in traffic next to you who may spend their weekend getting trashed at a club, searching for something that they’ll never find in the maw of a city. So you kept a couple fish for dinner? Sure is better than the person at the grocery store who doesn’t know or care where their food comes from. That old chestnut about stepping back and seeing the forest from the trees, about looking at the big picture, is appropriate here.
In recent years, the sport of fly fishing has done its level best to escape the shackles of elitism. More young people, more women, more minorities are taking up the sport. The final mantle we need to shed is petty purism, which plagues every niche sport in some way (traditional archery over a compound bow comes to mind). If you’ve handicapped yourself by taking up this silly sport (yes, it is very silly), you’ve done well, my fellow idiot. Don’t argue with your peers about who’s the bigger idiot—we have enough ways to use the internet to demonstrate our idiocy without turning new anglers away with our bickering. Just go fly fishing.
By James P. Spica (Editor-at-large)
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