What We Agree On
HAT WE’RE TOO DIVIDED. That a delicate hookset with a light leader on a 20-inch trout is a difficult thing to master. That fishing from a raft or a driftboat with two of your friends is a far more equitable experience when all three of you know how to row. That many American steelheaders this fall are learning just how it to truly understand. That flyfishing is typically enjoyed as a solitary or socially-distanced act, but that the cigar smoking and beer- or whiskey-drinking that sometimes follows should be a group activity, ideally while sitting around a campfire or lounging at some wellappointed, epicurean lodge. That flyfishing for carp is a lot more fun and challenging than any of us want to admit. That float-tubing for largemouth early on a summer morning or late on a summer evening, especially with a surface pattern, is one of the most underrated and underappreciated activities in flyfishing. That none of us really needs to own a leader straightener. That you don’t owe anyone an apology if you want to float ten miles while catching twenty trout on a double-nymph rig below a bobber. But if you stepped out of that boat on your next trip and spent an hour casting tiny dries to an 18-inch brown sipping bluewings up a side-channel, the experience might make you reconsider the nymph rig. That the future of flyfishing on our public lands and public waters ought to depend more on a family’s right to use them and less on a billionaire’s ability to buy them. That a full-grown musky is worth every one of those ten thousand casts. That a full-grown permit might not be, but that standing on the front of a flats boat or panga in April, with temps in the low 80s and a 5-knot Caribbean breeze, is generally more pleasant than blind-casting into 30-mile gusts from a driftboat in November when it’s 38 and raining on the Flambeau. That redfish and stripers make up for not jumping by bulldogging like few others can, and that if any actor were ever to play one of these fish in a movie, it would be Bruce Willis in That if you’re running for U.S. President, you should know how to pronounce Yosemite. That everyone needs to fish in Alaska, at least once. That fishing with dogs is more fun than fishing without dogs. That the joy of walking into a fly shop, talking to the people who work there, drooling over the streamer bins, casting a couple of rods, being shown a hand-drawn map to a small creek or lake that you never knew existed, drinking a new local beer, learning a new knot, a new fly, a new creek, sharing a joke, a joint, a laugh, a story if you really believe that all of this can easily or adequately be replaced by the “efficiency” of an Amazon truck, then you never really understood flyfishing in the first place.
