The good news is that I cast about as well as I write; tortured, circuitous, and unnecessarily lengthy. The bad news is I stumbled onto another time wasting pastime that had me cursing and giggling uncontrollably.

A devout follower of the Church of Monday Night Football, and this being the first services of the season, my pre-game warmup routine was interrupted by the fellows that invented the tele-prompter wizardry.

Did you know them same lads invented a fly fishing game?

It’s not bad. Casting is nightmarish, but quickly mastered once you remember the 10Am-2PM stroke of your youth. You have an ample fly assortment, and it even keeps count of the flies snapped off due to your hammy handed  strikes.

You can zoom to the water to observe insects, and then match the hatch. Nymphs and dries are available as are weighted nymphs and splitshot attached to your leader.

The demo is a 5MB download that allows you to fish a couple of the six rivers present, it runs under Windows XP just fine, and is virus free. The demo will end after each fish caught, just fire it again to catch another fish. Perfect cubicle fodder during lunch.

Casting long distances is a bloody Herculean effort, but roll casts and mending line are available to ease the fishing somewhat. I was hard pressed to cast beyond 50 feet, but did manage a 64 foot spaghetti cast that yielded a 16″ Brookie.

Mindless fun, liable to amuse you greatly – more importantly, it gives you the line you’ve lusted after for years, “Daddy will surrender the computer after the Caddis hatch is over, now go do your homework.”

Never happen? The holidays are fast approaching and you think you’ll be able to resist the new fishing rod controller for the Wii? More likely you’ll buy it for the kids…then fight them for it.

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