We’re safe for the moment because there’s still an occasional Field & Stream mixed in with People and National Enquirer in the dental waiting area, and it’s inappropriate to hold us Sons of the Greatest Generation accountable for our Poppa’s fixation with archaic blood sports.

… then again, all that could change in the blink of an eye …

With magazines hawking exotic venues and vendors hawking esoteric fibers and elaborate clothing rituals, there’s no question with each passing decade there’ll be less and less of us casual fishermen – and more and more of the monied “Professional” angler, even if that label applies only to Saturday and Sunday.

Which suits the younger crowd and vendor community just fine. They’ve struggled mightily to redefine the sport with Big City professionals, and like ten-speeds and blue jeans, our traditions are no longer expensive enough nor are they testimony to the agonies and suffering that pro-sports requires.

With global warming and all the critters and toxins dribbling off our streets, clothing, and tires, Mother Nature has no chance alone. That fat old bitch has had her day, and Pro-Anglers© will need newer and hardier quarry to make brief moments afield worthy of gasps back at the watercooler.

Along with the antiquated Norman Rockwell notion we’ll toss the entire environmental angle as well. What few natural species remain will be gasping in some rivulet where we can toss vended ice cubes to lower the temperatures enough to sustain traditional trout, an offering that shows fealty to those “What Came Before” and absolves the angler of all environmental guilt and his responsibilities for same …

We don’t fish the Outdoors much anymore, given the “clean room” garb we’re forced to wear to leave the pavement.

… and into this niche will fall most of Academia, whose grant monies dried up within the “Great Belt Tightening” – and we’ll get a vast crop of DNA based startups promising to restore ancient extinct species back to fenced pastures and overly warm brooks …

And after the novelty of it all wears off, there’ll be the monied crowd asking Disney staff could they take one into the parking lot and shoot the sumbitch, and do they want steaks or chops, and who stuffs a T-Rex ?

… and while we pick on hunters, given their propensity to blow acres of sunshine through everything, our monied professional fisherpeople, whose yen for extreme knows no bounds … they’ll be close behind.

Now we can flood old NFL stadiums and fish for stuff with FANGS …

It’s no surprise that a decade of unemployed scientists and the sudden dearth in academic grants would get most of the Ivy League to invent an indigenous industry that could promise to employ millions of the dispossessed.

We’ll be all smiles having applied responsible science to genetics and species restoration, we’ll be sure that all Meglodons released will be Triploids …

… which won’t save many swimmers, but by the time we realize we’re sharing the planet with a couple more apex predators, it won’t matter much.