I've been a big time trout fisherman for years. For the better part of twenty years to be exact. I even moved to the state of Montana, in search of big trout, and have found them by the way. So people always look at me like I'm insane when they start talking to me about fishing, and I have to interrupt them and say, "No, no, I don't fly fish". You know, they want to talk to me about what size and color flea to use, and I have to stop them right in their tracks, because I could give a rats ass about what kind of flea they like to use. But the point is they look at me like I'm insane, as if I'm less of an angler because I choose not to wave feathers back and forth in the air.

This is the biggest reason why I avoid fly fishing. Because the people who engage in it's cult like practice, have always given me the impression that I'm supposedly less of an angler than they are. From the time I was a child, I've always had a disdain for two things: religion and fly fishing. I never understood it when I was young, but I've always felt this way. I think it's because both practices are very exclusionary. They claim that they're not, but we all know that they are.

The entire idea that I'm less of an angler or a fly fisherman is more of an angler is laughable to me. I fish in much the same manner as the flea flickers, it's just that I use a 5 foot ultra light fishing rod spooled with four pound test, rather than a 10 foot rod spooled with whatever it is that a flea flicker spools their reel with. The elitist attitude of the flea flickers simply needs to be stopped in my opinion.

I've also always wondered how in the hell it happened that fly fishing has come to be considered an art? Waving feathers back and forth and reeling fish in by pulling your line isn't an art, so why to so many fly fisherman look at it as if it is? If waving a flea back and forth is an art, then what I do is an art as well, it's as simple as that.

The ultimate goal of both practices is to get outside, enjoy the wonder of nature, and maybe, just maybe catch a fish. Then release that fish to be enjoyed another day. AS flea flickers goal is the same as mine, so there is no reason for the elitist attitude. I think Steven Wright hit the nail on the head when he reminded us "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." Steven is correct about that, and it goes for both me and flea flickers alike. Sometimes that line is so fine it can't even be made out!

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