When I worked in fly shops I was surprised and unsettled at the “us versus them” culture. Somehow my working for “Shop A” meant I couldn’t refer customers to “Shop B”, as my coworkers quickly taught me they were unworthy, mostly stereo and car salesmen, criminals all …

Then when I started guiding, I was told the same held true for guides. Both groups were grizzled, weather-beaten, and smelled bad … both tied flies and fished as often as the other, both had a quick smile and a firm handshake, yet it was explained our guides practiced the One True Religion – and them other fellows were Pagans and idolaters.

Eventually I ascribed this uneasy state of affairs to the natural discomfort one feels when seeing another angler on a stretch of water you had to yourself. How their sudden appearance brings cities, work, laws, debt, politics, the stock market, and everything else you’d fled Friday afternoon … with them.

Not holding with conventional wisdom, I nodded vigorously when the list of our merits and their shortcomings was recited, then tried to stay clear of any Mason-Dixon line, real or imagined.

Entering the work force I cast aside the angling industry as one of many childish things of my youth, and found that in the company of doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and steamfitters, some small vocational distrust existed, but nothing on the scale the fly fishing industry boasted.

In fact, antisocial types were frowned upon, and I had to unlearn habits developed in the fly industry, like drying my sneakers in the lunch room microwave, or dipping the same chip twice after idly clipping my toenails.

Perplexed, I filed this workplace oddity away as one life’s many unknowns, and was glad that in my new career I wouldn’t have to worry what the carpenter next to me thought of my nail hammering abilities, or whether the hygienist working nearby loathed the way I scraped teeth …

… and with my many weekends I hovered around the sport and its many facets and noted that while things around me had changed, this part of fly fishing hadn’t budged.

… so I’m on the Internet reading about fishing in Europe, and am jarred when some fellow lights into a minor fishing dignitary for the placement of his sunglasses. Either they were of the wrong type, were worn at a too-rakish angle, or someone was a poser – and they’d seen him at some show, and he was rude and …

Enough.

I’ve rethought my earlier idea, and have a different theory. Instead of us versus them, the issue is we secretly resent angling professionals and anyone making a living in the angling arts, knowing that if we chucked all our responsibilities and opted for the fish bum lifestyle, our bum would make their bum look civilized in the comparison.

A “bum” is the only vocation that requires no credential or course of study. A “fish bum” is therefore just a fellow with the courage to dump his job and its mindless toil, jettison the Old Bag and her brood of kids, and drop out of society.

… we’d be a better bum than the guy whose article dominates the fish mag we’re reading, better than the guy clicking through the slide show above us on the podium, and more believable than the nasal fellow who needs a bass boat to make his bum film-worthy.

Which is why we insist we’re alone on the One True Path, knowing the other fellows secretly miss their latte, still covet 401K’s, their toothbrushes, and the approval of society.