Your points are well taken. I suppose in this age of specialization, folks are comfortable being identified as a subset of the whole.

My take on all of this is identical to your own, if through misfortune or poor genetics we’re afflicted with fishing lust – then the act of fishing is all that’s important, the how and the what is immaterial.

In defense of those that have the banners – you only need look at the tepid reactions of some of the other blogs to understand their righteous fervor.

Mainstream media wants desperately to overlook this “seamy underbelly” of fly fishing, and they’re aided and abetted by some of the traditional bias we’ve all seen before and endured.

For some, that’s a call to arms, for others it’s shrugged off as the Ghost of Angling Past.

I was thrilled at mainstream coverage, it’s one more avenue where we get to raise the public awareness to some of these longterm environmental issues.

You would think that with the small number of votes we (fly fishermen) can muster, we could look beyond the fractious silliness for seven minutes – in order to do some good.

Instead, most took umbrage at the “invented” word – when the correct term should have been “popularized.”

“Invented” is a four letter word, as everyone knows somebody, that knew this dude, whose brother did it first.

I think that’s the root of the evil and partisanship.

I also found fallacy with many of the posters comments regarding carp living in dirty ugly places. Opportunists like John Montana, Wendy Berrell, and my self will quickly tell you that carp thrive in clean beautiful water too. It just that the other blueliners we are sharing the same water with are too busy drooling over their stunted 6″ brookie to see us landing a 20# behemoth.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I look at neither the landscape or anthropogenic influence when fly fishing; I focus on the fish. It is the pursuit and chase I seek; the brown water just happens to be there sometimes.

Just because they are not driving over to a local creek and dumping their household trash and used couch does not mean they are without guilt in contributing to our declining environment.

Some of us, brownliners included, are actually doing something locally to clean up the creeks, pressure the politicians, and contribute to slowing the sullying of our streams.

(You still have a 201K??? All I have left is my 101K.)

The mainstream tried to look away in distaste (but couldn’t quite make it), but I did find the guy’s comment about “giving up in the fight to preserve nature spots” interesting, even if largely wrong.

In truth, we could see an affect like that if brownlining acquires an anti-bluelining patina – which makes about as much sense as deer hunters hating on elk hunters because they’re snobs.

In truth – outside of the well-known fact that all brownliners are descended directly from the Neanderthals – there isn’t much difference (one needs a giardia cure, the other a home heavy metals chelating kit).