From the Bighorn Angler – Seven Must Have Sowbugs
The State of Angling, Peter Scorzetti
From the Blue Ribbon Flies newsletter this past week, posted without modification, emphasis mine –
The State of Angling
We’re rolling into another season with yet a larger fishing community. There’s no doubt that we’ll look back on these last few years as milestones of a changing era. Social media has spread this once obscure sport to the masses. This offseason, I met several people with plans to take up fly fishing that I couldn’t imagine taking up the sport five or six years ago.
Fly anglers have always been diverse in taste, but unified in intensity and thirst for skill. To me, it feels to me that spectrum is widening. More and more anglers fish with other goals in mind. Some are just in it for the physical experience, rather than solving the mental puzzles, others are fishing just because it happens to fit into their outdoor lifestyle, and some are simply finding their way into the sport because it’s a cool thing to do now.
Prestige was definitely one of the magnets that pulled me to this sport. How can one not be impressed by the mastery of skill and knowledge of anglers, and want to become one of them? Nevertheless, something feels different about our sport these days. And I don’t think badly of it. The more anglers, the more protection for fish and the ecosystems that surround them. But I am unsure of what our future holds. Will the potency of this satisfying pastime be diluted? Or, will all its participants succumb to the same addiction we’ve been taken by no matter how they’ve come to fly fish?
