The death of the quiet sport?

The death of the quiet sport

As I sit here listening to the excellent recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations by Andras Schiff, I am reading online about the revolution that is sweeping fly fishing for steelhead: the gangsta revolution.

This new irreverent movement has been growing for the past ten years or so, and portrays the sport of steelheading as an X-game adrenaline sport. I have nothing in general against the evolution in equipment, but what bothers me deeply is the tone of the rhetoric. Instead of writing “The mists had barely risen to kiss the tops of the pines as I slowly passed through time and the river”, we have “Yo, Mothafucka, shread that line, bro. Rock n’ roll! Kick Ass dude! Roasted!”

Now I know that times change, and that classical English and our spoken and written language will change with time, but is this what we have come to? Magazine covers with guys in gangsta poses holding fish like they were snow boarding? Fly fishing film tours that are indistinguishable from a Warren Miller video complete with rap music? What happened out there while I was asleep dreaming of the streams? What happened to respect? What happened to appreciation of nature and poetry? Where is the beautiful ballet of unfolding loops? Is it all banished to the wastelands where groups of outcast ‘traditionalists’ sit by a fire like bums, waxing on how it used to be in the ‘good old days’? Has flyfishing become a game of numbers at last? Has it finally become an unrestrained testosterone driven manhood contest? Why can’t these new young guns innovate without trashing everything and everybody that has gone before them?

“Yo, Erik… Dude, get with the times homeboy!”

Really? Why so loud my friend? Why so loud?

Why does the revolution have to be proclaimed from the gutters and alleyways by trustafarians raised in rich suburbs who now have the luxury of being a rebel and keeping it real?

What ever happened to quiet and restraint? To appreciation? To just sit on the bank and love nature? To cast and fish in your mind? To dream. To be a romantic.

Or, has the romance been sanitized out of the sport? Has technology interposed itself and replaced our ability to think, analyze, appreciate, and romanticize? Have we collectively lost the ability of silent thought? Perhaps there are more of us out there than I think. Perhaps it is our silence and appreciation that is being only for a short time eclipsed by the yowling mating call of the wild irreverent rebels. Perhaps they will quiet down in time when they are not chasing steelhead like they were a nightclub bimbo conquest with equipment that is a highbred between bait casting and fly fishing.

Before you go and categorize me as an ‘old stogie’, I must tell you that I have many friends in this new young gun revolution, but to a person, they are respectful of the sport and others.

The fly fishing industry is cozying up to these gangstas too. Pop culture sells fly rods and reels, Pop culture leads more people to embrace the sport as their way to become ‘cool’. But, I ask, at what cost? As the shread movement becomes more widespread and respected in the industry, will those persons who always dreamed of taking up fly fishing be scared away?

Fly fishing used to be a sport that was seen as a gentleman’s sport. A sport elevated over the common not only by the knowledge of its practitioners, but also by its lore, its art, its innate uniqueness and difference from ‘regular fishing’. It had romance, taste, and refinement, and it attracted the sort of anglers that appreciated these qualities. Today, it is becoming a spoiled rich white kid punk sport. What a shame.

Tone it down. That is my advice. As you go dumbing it down, please tone it down, or there will be nothing left to appreciate at all…
Sometimes I feel so alone. Thank God for Bach.

Romance? Appreciation?

Look no further than here. This is what is missing.
From William Butler Yeats (Thanks Shane.)


The Song Of Wandering Aengus
By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.