UNDERCURRENTS
FLY FISHING SUCKS W H Y F LY F I S H W H E N Y O U C A N P L AY G O L F, G O S U R F I N G O R U S E A M E D I TAT I O N A P P ? P L A G U E D B Y O F F E R S T O G O F LY F I S H I N G , M AT T H E W F R E E M A N T L E C O N S U LT E D T H E I N T E R W E B S F O R A N S W E R S .
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ost people, when they reach the age of 38, have found satisfactory ways to fill their days. I am one of those people. There is no such thing as spare time and, if new hobbies are to be accommodated, older ones have to make way. Like a packed nightclub, it’s a “one in, one out” policy. So, when someone suggested recently that I try fly fishing, I knew immediately and with a pang of annoyance that something beloved would have to be sacrificed. Some pastimes are more demanding than others. Golf must be among the hardest to love from the outside. It takes forever, it’s expensive and it’s mainly about being reminded of an age that should long since have passed, where poor men carry the possessions of rich men on their backs. Surfing is also notorious, even if there are fewer bigots in the surfing world. I have lost a lot of good friends to surfing. Interactions with these bygone pals are now a waste of time, for them too, I suspect. They stare, sheepeyed and distracted while you speak, more concerned with the twitching leaf just behind your head that suggests the wind has changed offshore. They are lost to the world of non-surfing, which, it is worth remembering, consists of everything else wonderful in the world. Love it or loathe it, surfing, like golf and fly fishing, is clearly a potent drug. If sober, sensible people have been mesmerised - and, to my mind, badly simplified - by it, then their charms cannot be denied. If you try one of these activities, you will want to do it again, and again, until eventually it’s all you’ll want to do. It is at least worth considering that you needn’t try them at all. Obsessive sports like the aforementioned tend to be quite difficult, take a very long time and are best enjoyed alone, surrounded by nature. The same can certainly be said about fishing and even more so about its highfalutin’ cousin, fly fishing. Because it threatens to rob me of precious time, it is with fly fishing chiefly that I have an axe to grind. The trouble is, fly-fishers won’t take no for an answer. Their reaction is worse than cheerful persuasion, it is total bafflement. They are so confident in the appeal of their
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passion that they cannot understand why you wouldn’t want to do it too. So began the obvious necessity to find as many reasons not to do it as possible. To this end, I set about trawling the world wide web to put forward the case against fly fishing, which is a perfectly normal thing to do although I risked veering horribly wide of my editor’s brief It may be true that you can have anything confirmed by the internet - I recently saw someone give The World of Birds, a sanctuary for sick or injured birds and monkeys, a one-star review on Facebook. It was unnervingly easy to find strong and vociferous disapproval for fly fishing and its protagonists online. To the popular FishUSA forum, where user AndyLee had provoked 223 responses to a post asking: Can somebody explain fly fisherman snobbery to me? TastyTrout, listed as an ‘Expert Angler’, warned that “making that assumption opened up a whole can of worms”, which may or may not be true but which at the very least works as a deft fishing pun. “When I go bass fishing, guys using crank baits don’t look down on guys using soft plastic worms,” said Tasty. I don’t know what that means but it sounds like reasonable grounds for chagrin.” Tension on the stream bank? You work all week, wake up in the dark to go and stand waist deep in cold water and instead of blissful tranquillity you’ve got some surly spinwheel rod fisher staring daggers at your back and kicking over your bait box when you aren’t looking. This was a useful negative; my case was gathering heft. Apparently, fly-fisher people have derisory nicknames for non-fly fisher people, such as “bait floppers” or “worm drowners”. The plebs do have their comeback names, like “water slappers”, but they aren’t as clever or waspish. I’d rather be a water slapper than a worm drowner, wouldn’t you? (Again, it’s worth remembering that we don’t need to be either.) D-Nymph closed the book on AndyLee’s question, with the following contribution: “Sure. It’s because we are smarter, better looking and wealthier than you. Our women are hotter too.” It will take some Pulitzer-level - though perhaps not Pulitzer worthy - research to determine the
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