It is not everyday that one gets accosted in a tackle shop.  Unless you are I.

(That turn of phrase “You are I” sounds like douche-baggery but it is grammatically correct…pointing this out however is clearly douche-baggery.  This will become a theme shortly.)

So I was speaking with the store manager about kayaks.  During our conversation, I complimented one of his rigging ideas but said I would have little use for it myself since I was a fly fisherman.

“Dude, you are one of those fags.”

The accusation came from a woman, her arms loaded with Kastmasters, jig heads and braided line.  Her red hair hung to the small of her back which I’m proud of myself for noticing because her pink thong was peeking from beneath her camouflaged cargo pants.

Now there isn’t much in this world in which I can take pride, the good Lord did not see fit to bless me with an abundance of talent, intelligence, or luck.  However, I am never at a loss for words, my eloquence is my saving grace.  So with full confidence I answered her challenge.

“Ummm I’m not a fag.”  Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator,  would be proud.

“Yes you are,” her accent was odd - as a general rule of thumb if a pretty girl is talking to you in the Northeast it means she’s not from the Northeast.  “All you fly fishermen are the same.  Always looking down on us anglers just because we want to catch fish.”

“Hey I’m an angler too.”

“No your not.”

“Yes I am.”

“You so aren’t.”

“But being an angler just means you use hooks - bait, lures, flies doesn’t matter - the hook is angled and that’s where the term comes from.”

“You’re a douche-bag.”  She was right.

That’s how I met Sara, I’m sure she will be the subject of a few other posts because I learned an awful lot from her.  A colorful character if ever there was one, part-time commercial fisherwoman part-time exotic dancer tough as nails.  The kind of woman who wouldn’t think twice of stealing her neighbor’s cat and staking it out as coyote bait, and then not understand why people thought that was cruel since the cat was much safer with her and her rifle than if the coyotes were left unchecked.  Sara is crass, but I have found that she is rarely wrong.

Sara considered fly fishermen to be well several hurtful things based on her interactions with them, and the reality that many fly fishing organizations actively protested her livelihood.

Personally, I have always considered the characterization of the commercial fisherman as a person who rapes the sea driven only by greed to be rather stupid.  There are much better jobs for people who are driven merely by greed.  Equating commercial fishermen with poachers is about as honest as comparing pharmacists to drug-lords.  At the end of the day, a commercial fisherman has provided for himself, his family, and performed a necessary service to the community, where I - a Catch and Release Fly fisherman - have done nothing more noble than put holes in fish for no reason other than my own enjoyment.

The moral high-ground many fly fishermen claim is shaky at best.  I still believe that fly fishing is the form of recreational angling that harms fish the least, but a fish taken by a recreational angler benefits that angler.  A fish taken by a commercial guy, benefits himself, the market, the restaurant, and ultimately the consumer.  Catch and Release is a benefit because the fish can be caught again, which provides for a tourist industry, guides, gear, etc.  I mention this only to point out that in the world of fisheries management, everyone who stands on the moral high-ground is about as stable as A Fiddler on the Roof.

(Mentioning Musical Theater in a fly fishing blog is certainly douche-baggery.)

What surprised me more, however, was the assault on what I assumed was the rock-solid claim that fly fishing is a more traditional style of fishing.

I love that when I fish for stripers that in many ways I am pitting myself against the sea.  I don’t have a fish finder, spotter plane, sonar, or other modern reconnaissance device.  I have only my eyes, ears, nose, and wits.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but the challenge is always there, the ability to learn forever tested.  Fly tackle is fairly primitive by modern standards, and the actual process of standing in the sea and casting to fish feels like something from an earlier time, like something our grandfathers may have done.

And that’s the rub.

Our grandfathers may have fished as we do, but it is far more likely that the majority of them thought like commercial guys.  They would have used the latest technology and tactics to get results.  Furthermore, lest we forget, our grandfathers were the retards that thought the oceans were an endless resource and depleted it in the first place.  They are far more like the mythic rapers of the sea than today’s modern commercial fisherman.  Oh and I love the excuse but they didn’t know better back then…seriously? That whole experience with the passenger pigeon, American Buffalo, Dodo bird, whales - come on grow up.

(Insulting the Greatest Generation is never a good thing, probably have Tom Hanks calling me.  Wait, weren’t they the parents of the Hippies or as I like to call them the Lamest Generation?  Horrible parents, should have slapped the crap out of those bastards.  So now I’ve insulted both the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, probably not smart but not clearly douche-baggery.)

This means when I die and go to the great sandbar in the sky.  I can meet gramps, we’ll probably fish in the same style but we’ll each think the other is an ass.  This will be like a fly fishing version of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit.

(For those of you keeping score - mentioning the work of a French Existentialist in a fly fishing blog is definitely douche-baggery.  Sartre was a D’bag as well.)

So what does all this mean? Nothing, and that’s the point.  A fly fisherman chooses to fish in his style, a surf caster has his, and the bait guys have theirs.  At the end of the day, we are fair more alike than different, and should really work together to protect the resource from our common enemy than try to stab each other in the back.  When the world is free of poachers, polluters, marshland fill-in-ers, golfers, PETA bitches, and the assorted enemies of fishing everywhere then I’ll look down my nose at the girl with the Kastmasters.

Then again I probably wont. I’m not a douche-bag.