I’ve always been comfortable with the Bull in the China shop approach, it’s a mixture of distaste for societal norms, tolerance for physical pain, and diminished IQ.

 

Ardor is useful for the young, but is often confused as evangelical when you’re older. “Religion” tends to breed cliques and the us-versus-them mentality, useful when you’re the underdog, but has little place in fly fishing.

We’ve got enough fractious behavior, backbiting, and cliques to rival any public middle school.

The recent article on “Brownlining” appearing in the Wall Street Journal, bred commentary that reminded me of the issue. While I cannot speak for all devotees, I’ll suggest this is largely perception, and will expand on the topic below.

…but I do think the author missed an opportunity to expand on the gentleman’s comment that brownlining is a “sanctioning” of nature’s destruction. At first I thought that these men were doing something novel in making the best of their environment, but then I realized, yes, they’re giving up in the fight to preserve nature spots.

Not so. Take an ardent fisherman whose got to work for a living, who – like you – has half a weekend afternoon to get in some “decompress” time, draw a circle around his house of an hour or less – and that’s what he’ll fish.

The fact that he represents a small voting minority comprised of like minded individuals means he’ll be fishing soiled water. Most of us live in urban areas whose voters deemed water quality and riparian habitat less important than green lawns and cheap rutabagas.

… which lie lonesome and congealing on children’s plates.

We’re still the only fellow keeping an eye on the drainage, the only guy packing out discarded water bottles, or alerting the authorities to the car or corpse in the streambed. We haven’t given up on the environment, we’re merely fishing the Now rather than gash our bosom over “how it ought to be.” At each opportunity we vote our belief, donate time or money to organizations that avow the same principles, but our lobby is weak, our collective voice a murmur, and our numbers diminish with every passing year.

Pristine blue water can turn into brown water by adding industry and people – and once brown, stays that way. As new watershed can’t be created and what’s left is either fenced or in slow decline, our children won’t understand this color distinction as they’ll be drinking it.

I enjoyed this article, but I think it gives the false impression that fishing in these marginal waters is relatively new. Other than the name “brown lining”, it is certainly not new.

So true. The earliest civilizations are synonymous with great waterways; the Thames, Nile, Tigris, Ganges, Yalu, Yangtze, etc., all spawned civilizations whose waterways boosted the flow of goods with other countries and municipalities. Untreated sewage and wastewater were intermingled with fishing nets and bathers, and the only new wrinkle is leisure time, a modern invention, and the concept of fishing as sport rather than subsistence.

Interesting story, but I’d still rather catch a 10-15 inch trout in clear water than a 10-15 pound bottom feeder in a toxic cesspool. Call it elitism if you like, but these guys will be happy I’m not into it.

I’m not so sure. Firstly, “toxicity” is a shifting target largely dependent on the government for “recommended daily dosages.” When we discover that  (2R)-2-[(4-Ethyl-2,3-dioxopiperazinyl)carbonylamino]-2-phenylacetic acid makes your children unable to reproduce, some fellow in Washington exclaims, “oOpsie” – and then a decade later – adds it to the long list of things to monitor in your drinking water.

… and secondly, a 10-15 pound bottom feeder has physics on his side. Whether lethargic or acrobatic it’s still twice the size of your tippet and glued to the bottom. It’s something to do while waiting for your daughter at band practice, and it’s something that keeps your reflexes sharp and your form true, so the first day of your vacation isn’t wasted as you relearn how to cast …

Clear water is toxic too – brown only gives you an extra visual cue.

…These are quite possibly the hardest fish to catch in fresh water on fly rods…they have some of the most advanced senses of smell of any animal and are easily spooked by even the most gentle casts.

Precisely what we’ve discovered, a one pound trout on a four pound tippet is a test of the trout, a fourteen pound fish on six pound tippet is a test of the angler. Isn’t that what we’re really looking for?

I bet these men would still jump at the chance to go fishing in pristine nature settings.

Also true, but nature is many hours distant and requires a weekend to be truly efficient. A two income household in a declining job market with an onerous mortgage, a 201K, and a kid needing orthodontia … Nature might have to take a backseat to food on the table.

To me the brown water is something close by that I can fish daily without endangering the family unit. No different from the practice range for golfers, who despite the decline in the economy, still have 51 weekends of desire, and a 16 weekend budget.

Beats crap out of painting the living room or remaining cloistered on the couch.

It’s certain some will prefer a secret society and claim to rival Theodore Gordon, but I want no part in it. I just want to make fish suffer.

Given the circumstances, Brown water with it’s miles of river and the solitude of Nature, with working fish and no human competition, contrasted with tales of overcrowding and traffic, rising costs and the diminishing returns of blue water, might make it the last frontier.

It doesn’t make its practitioners anything special unless the wind shifts.