I sometimes feel like there is an ideal angler we are all somehow failing to live up to.
It is like the photoshopped model on the cover of the magazine. Millions of girls all over the country see the phoney model as an ideal of beauty and they can never meet the false standard.
Fly fishing has that same problem. There are some really great more-or-less professional anglers out there. They don’t do it as a hobby, they live it. They live on the water, on waters all over the world, and they have deeply honed skills. They are in movies and in magazines and they are generally great guys with very enviable lives.
That isn’t the life of the average angler. Most of us have families, jobs and a whole host of other priorities keeping us behind desks, in cars, doing homework with kids or at soccer/baseball games or the parade of never ending weekend birthday parties and generally in a non-fishing state.
I think it is time to embrace the occasional angler. I think it is time to drop the dick measuring in the “days on the water” metric. I think we should recognize that the standard is not realistic and we should get comfortable with not being a trout bum or having our own entry in the film festival.
Just a thought.
This is who I am.
How about we all just enjoy when we get a chance to get after it and encourage each other when we have those opportunities.
PS – Happy Birthday to my girl, who is 7 today.
My daughter putting the 2 wt. stick to a bluegill.
