We’re ill prepared to encounter someone interested in our fish – where our attempts to catch them interfere with others trying to photograph or paint fish in their natural surroundings.

As the Pristine dwindles it’s likely to put a great number of heretofore invisible wildlife lovers squarely in our path. and begs the question, who gets first dibs at the quarry?

Considering we’ve got a stellar track record of sharing secret fishing spots with each other not at all, I fear my reaction to a bird watcher or watercolor artist insisting I stay back from a pod of feeding fish would be confusing to me at best …

I was reminded by this piece from the UK, how a member of an angling club legally harvested a cormorant from the club water, then was accosted by militant bird watchers and beaten soundly.

… not all insect lovers, bird watchers, and water color artists are pansies, and they’ve got their share of louts and Visigoths too.

By default I’d have to cede the water to them as was there first, according the same privilege to other nature lovers that I’d give to the Brethren.

But their view of the proceedings and ours will not match, a lesson drilled home on a blind date some twenty years ago, wherein the comely lass was introduced to me by the shores of a lake.

Big mistake.

Our communal pal quickly explained my inattentiveness to the fact that I was a “great fisherman” … and when her lip started to curl, I knew I was raw meat.

Frantically attempting to salvage the occasion and mention, “I let them all go.”  – figuring that was the one saving grace that might set things square. Her response was thinly veiled, “do you like torturing them?”

Figuring all those Big City gals shared the same mentality, where salmon are shat onto a Styrofoam platter and saran-wrapped via conscious choice – and coupled with the spectre of enforced celibacy, I was happy to change zipcode within the year.

It’s an unlikely topic, yet with all the pressures on these precious resources, a skirmish or two may be in our future.

Tags: trout fishing, watercolors, outdoor photography, nature lovers, sharing natural resources, raw meat,