Bending Reality: Fly Rods and Stream Access

by Mark McGlothlin on June 3, 2013

in Access and Public Lands

Bending-Reality

When you think about it, the physics of a fly rod – no matter whether constructed of cane, glass or graphite – are damned impressive.

Fully loaded (and imaged at just the right moment), those sticks we wave while standing in various waters can seem to defy reality.

In a world that seems to favor special effects and make believe as opposed to stark reality (I offer federal economic reporting as a prime example), the comforting simplicity of holding a reality-bending fly rod in hand and casting the hell out of it will bring a smile to the crankiest fisher most days.

Defying reality was the first thought that came to mind after reading this opinion published a few weeks ago in the Great Falls Tribune, written by James Huffman, dean emeritus at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland on behalf of PERC in Bozeman. Huffman was writing in response to the recent Montana Supreme Court hearing on the Ruby River scuffle and stream access in Montana.

Missoula attorney Jack Tuholske and MT TU Director Bruce Farthing responded on the 30th of May with this piece – Montana Opinion: Stream Access Column Showed Shallow Understanding – again published in the GF Tribune.

Both are worth a read if you have any interest at all in the ongoing battle over access, water and property rights in the state of Montana.

Tuholske and Farthing take a direct poke at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, founded somewhat ironically 30 years ago in Bozeman. And Tuholske and Farthing are right, PERC is on the wrong side of the stream access fence here; Kennedy’s approach has been coarse, uncivil and asinine throughout the Ruby River saga.

Interestingly PERC has been hounded by other fly fishing portals and writers for their stream access and other environmental positions. One prominent fly fishing blog (assuming the typical posture of the extreme environment movement) has gone so far as to profanely personally insult and denigrate PERC leadership and staffers, an approach long on hot air and distraction and short on substance.

To be damned honest about it, and coming from the perspective of a guy who makes part of his living buying and selling land around the West, PERC has some intriguing concepts from a policy standpoint and they’re asking some very important questions about the environment today that no one else seems to care to. Here’s their web portal section on water issues – some very interesting stuff there to waste some time with today…

We still naively think that cooperatively derived solutions are far better than standing in a court room (or university ballroom) and lobbing attorneys back and forth at one another.

Bending fly rods is far better than bending reality any day.