.. The desperate fund raising effort of the American Museum Of Fly Fishing is proceeding apace and their feeble attempt to justify their efforts ignore the damage done by the guest of . . . . . "Honor???".. An interesting and insightful response to the Ted Williams piece is excerpted below. "Trout Bums" beware.
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This situation is a textbook reflection of a much larger and more insidious problem within the "sport" of fly-fishing, specifically that, while fly-fishing does hold within it a rich and honorable tradition of conservation and enlightenment, it also caters to some of the most childish, self-centered, pompous, small-minded, newly rich, rightwing one-generation-from-cracker wannabes (I think I covered it all, but forgive me if I missed any) on the planet. I'm no animal rights activist; I fly-fish and tie flies whenever I get the time; I eat meat and even eat fish, even trout, on occasion; and I even raise a small herd of those damned cattle to help protect my hold on an allotment, although under tight control and certainly never in anything close to riparian habitat.
But, it has always been my belief that, when you take something, you give back and set the stage to keep things whole. So, I have worked hard, used to work harder before the Butch/Sheeney Administration made it seem so futile, to get fly-fishers, trout anglers, to understand that it is only honorable to repay our disturbance of the waters by acting to preserve and conserve the resources, especially the remaining native trout species, from which we derive our pleasure.
A fraction of fly-fishers join me in embracing this obligation; but, more and more, the majority only seem selfishly interested in preserving the populations of feral rainbows and browns that have come to infest their pet streams. The thought of temporarily foregoing a fishing experience in order to remove non-native species and preserve a native trout that should be in the stream is just not a sacrifice that they are willing to even think about. Bob Jacklin's role in coalescing opposition to the renovation of Yellowstone waters is a relatively minor, but clear, example. Their attitude seemed to be "damn the natives; we just want to fish." To the extent that old Sheeney likes to fly-fish, which I am sure is exaggerated for publicity sake, his role in the worst despoiling regime in America's history both illustrates my point and mocks any tradition of honorable sportsmanship that the museum may still want to cling to. ...and I'm not alone in my sentiment.
One of the greatest of America's fly-fishing gurus, a guy who used to tour the conclaves with his buddies in the heyday of the late 80s and early 90s, recently confessed that his love of the sport is tainted today by the hypocrisy of those who profess the sport, but have no clue about the underlying ethics of conservation.
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So be it.