I’ve warned you plenty of times – yet still I’m the recipient of your extended digit and pronounced raspberry. The Pied Piper of Taut Flesh keeps you thinking you can mix pleasure and sacred avocation, yet us old guys know better – we tried it and perfection can’t be improved on ..

Large fish sipping naturals, a light breeze rustling aspen leaves, the burble of cold water over slick rock, and the gasp of pent up carbonation released in a rush …

… or in the case of us oldsters … never mind.

Girls don’t mix with fly fishing. Women might – but that tired old cliché of sub-twenty year olds roasting bottom on the sandy borders of some mountain freshet, eager to share a meaningful tryst with old guys that haven’t showered all weekend, that is a complete falsehood.

Same as the notion that you don’t need little blue pills for your … um …indigestion.

Slow learner?

– via US Magazine

Click the picture above to watch all that flesh and giggling tautness sneer at one another, complain constantly, backbite-fu, and generally piss all over our beloved sport and their Bachelor host (when he can’t hear) …

Remember, I watched it for scientific reasons, you’re the one with the penchant for complete (gag) trash.

I expected most of the angling world to be in mourning, yet nary a mention of the possible demise of Wonderbread and the Twinkie, two of angling’s last remaining superfoods …

Hostess and fly fishing have an enormous amount of shared lore which has been lost on recent generations due to their insistence on healthy streamside fare.

Wonderbread started our interdependence on synthetics, being the first manmade material able to claim “lighter than air” and enjoying  a speedy adoption among the dry fly enthusiasts.

It didn’t matter that “lighter than air” only applied to swallowing the meal, once down it was as leaden as anything spawned of a test tube.

Poptarts and Twinkies ushered in the purely chemical era, where we no longer feared food stains on our vests and could wad sandwiches and delicious desert snacks into the smallest of pockets, there to lie dormant for an entire season.

Flat, round, polygonal, or simply mashed, Wonderbread retained sandwich content in a semi-sterile envelope that allowed sunlight and a sweaty angler to warm it to room temperature and beyond – allowing us extra miles afield without fear of starvation, food poisoning, or empty calories.

Twinkies were synonymous with the notion of the floating strike indicator, as its delicious buttery shell once dubbed, “the Golden Life Preserver of Snack Foodage”, by countless anglers who’ve gone in over their heads yet were yanked to the surface complements of the protective shroud that was Twinkie buoyancy …

Both Ray Bergman and noted outdoorsman and baseball legend, Ted Williams likened the Twinkie to a culinary abomination, yet characterized the desert as the “Bamboo Rod of Parking Area Fingerfoods.”

We all recognize that we’re supposed to fill our vests with healthy fare; 5 Hour Energy Shots, Koolaid, and Pop Rocks, but considering what we’ve built on its greasy foundation, won’t you consider buying a box simply for old time’s sake?

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.