To a certain degree, I feel most recreational fishermen who become fly fishermen do so for a heightened challenge, and they are often willing to sacrifice effectiveness in order to foster this challenge.  This applies to all fly fishermen with the possible exception of guys who fish streams for trout. 

I can smell the hate so let me reiterate and pontificate for your rage to sate (one day I’ll have to write and entire Flyosophy in rhyme.) 

Stream-based trout fishing is most effectively performed with a fly rod.  There are challenges of course but a fly fisherman in that environment has a profound advantage over a conventional gear angler.  The fly rod offers greater control during a drift.  A fly line can be mended to achieve a drag-free presentation.  Flies can be tied to exactly mimic the forage which may change by the hour.  The guy with a spin rod is entirely out-classed. 

Now compare that to say a lake-based pike angler.  There the spin rod offers considerable advantages over the fly rod.  Lures can be worked further, deeper, faster, slower, and with the greater control a shorter stouter rod offers.  The lures themselves can be much larger than a fly fisherman could hope to cast and a solid plastic or wooden lure with produce a far more powerful vibrations in the water.  In this fishery, the fly rodder is at a disadvantage, and needs to overcome this handicap with savvy and skill.

Why bring this up?  Because recently I was speaking with a fly fisherman who had it in his head that sight fishing a flat was the only real way to fly fish in saltwater – he had spent a lot of time thinking about this.  His beliefs centered on the idea that fly fishing traditionally was stream-based so one needed a location where the water moved fairly consistently in one direction – like a stream.  Flies were to be small and drifted with the current to a fish that you knew was there.  I feigned interest and let him continue.  Fast sinking lines, distant casts, large gaudy flies, even varied stripping retrieves were not traditional and thus not fly fishing, or as he phrased it fishing with a fly rod is not always fly fishing. 

I had a moment of clarity.  I realized something that I feel will serve me well in the remaining days of my life.  No nothing about fishing, unfortunately, but something about debate and human thought patterns.  The very best way to win an argument with a _______________ is to be a more thorough _______________.  Yes, I realize that a mark of maturity would be to not argue with people and just let it go in one ear and out the other as my grandmother would say.  But where is the fun in that?  See the reason this works is people are perpared to argue with their natural foil.  A conservative, for instance, is comfortable arguing with a liberal, but what about a more conservative conservative?  I believe I owe this bit of wisdom to the radio program “Coast to Coast with George Noory.”  It is a wicked late night radio show where the host has guests and callers speak about UFO’s, religious conspiracies, black helicopters, and medical miracles – the perfect thing to listen to while driving to a fishing spot.  What I learned – in addition to Bigfoot being an alien – is that when a skeptic calls in they can never win an argument, it is simply impossible to use logic or any other technique to sway these people.  However, when a caller makes an even more outrageous claim, with less proof and greater speculation, the guests are generally unable to make their point.  The very best way to win an argument with a crackpot is to be a more through crackpot.

So in the case before me, the angler was arguing as an elitist with a purist bent, so the most effective argument would be one that a more elite elitist would make.  Being a “Murph for All Seasons” I knew I was up to the job.

I gave him a wry smile, like one would give a child.  A voiced my opinion that the tradition of fly fishing came from men of means who unlike their peasant contemporaries did not need to catch a fish in order to sustain themselves or feed their presumably filthy children.  Since sporting, reading and whoring were the only recreations in “ye olden days,” these gentlemen sought out a more advanced and thus more fulfilling means of performing what the common man did, thus to demonstrate their superior intellects.  That’s why fly fishing came to be, and the reason blasting ducks sitting on the pond after tossing them bread is a social gaffe.  The best books don’t have pictures, and why a trophy wife improves one’s social status where a trip to the brothel followed by one to the clinic does not.  Being effective is the mark of a troglodyte, achieving with style is the hallmark of a gentleman.

I concluded by illustrating that I am an active participant in this noble pursuit, pushing against the boundaries of what is possible for my own entertainment, while he like the millions of mud-drenched nameless plebeians before him is merely doing what has already been proven to work, and in his small-mindedness can not fathom why another would do differently.  I tell him its ok, and I forgive him.

There was no counter-argument.  I was disappointed.

Like most good jokes, this exchange hides a kernel of truth.  Fly fishermen generally are seeking challenges, and most other fishermen are trying to help them…which naturally lessens the challenge which is what you were looking for in the first place.  The simple fact of the matter is if you aren’t fishing with a net, electrode, or explosive then effectiveness is not your primary motivator.  You are fishing for some other reason than to merely acquire a fish.  This is good.     

“Accept challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.” 

General George S. Patton

 There is an exhilaration of victory when a challenge is achieved; there is also a more lasting feeling a sense of personal growth.  The knowledge that you can do more today than you could the day before can be very uplifting, kind of like being a little kid. 

Most of us probably started catching fish at some point with a push-button rod rigged with a bobber and baited with a worm.  We caught bluegills and thought it was awesome.  Then some of us wondered if we could catch them on something other than worms and experimented with bread, corn, crickets, snails, leeches, and those nasty Mary Jane bars the geezer down the street handed out for Halloween.  Others may have given up on bluegill entirely and sought out bass, perch or whatever.  Still others may have determined that the local pond held fish, what about the creek, river, lake, or that big blue smear on three quarters of the teacher’s desk globe.  I vast majority of us probably skipped down a number of these paths.

Yet, I think many of us, as we age, fall into the trap of wanting to be either an expert or at least comfortable.  We learn a stretch of river so intimately that the unknown section around the bend remains unknown.  We tie what becomes our signature fly so often and so well that there really is no reason to try something new, and so we don’t.  Then we become like the guy in the opening story.  No longer are we merely disinterested in doing something a different way, we start to see it as being somehow wrong.  Whether it is frowning at an indicator, refusing to believe a 90′ fly line should be cast 90′, or voicing disgust at a fly which imitates a well-fed muskrat.

See the greatest challenge in fly fishing is not a bonefish on the flats, a Marlin from the abyss, or a wild brown trout on a 32.  The greatest challenge in fly fishing is the continual improvement of the fly fisherman.        

There is a profound difference between what makes a something a good challenge, and what makes a task just needlessly harder than it has to be.  For instance hooking and landing a fish on a dull hook is more challenging than with a sharp one…it is also stupid, a moronic handicap. Challenges are different angler to angler.  Distance casting could be a challenge to a guy who can cast 30′ but it can also be a challenge for a guy who can easily cast 100′.  Some guys pride themselves on having the perfect fly for every situation, others like to see how well they can get by with just a handful of patterns, and some even just one.  I honestly don’t think it matters, but you will learn in one day fishing in a manner which is unfamiliar to you than you will in 30 years of doing the same routine.

The fish themselves can even be considered a part of the challenge – odd as that may seem.