If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d still be carrying a cellphone with an antenna …you remember those bulky handhelds that needed the antenna raised to get good reception. I’ve evolved; but only to a place in the cellular world that has me using a flip phone.
I’m a little bit better when it comes to computers. I still rely on my kids to decipher the software, but I’m at least into a laptop …“She Who Must Be Obeyed” has an iPad that was supposed to be our IPad, but I now get scowled at when I try to use it. I understand her reluctance to share, I’m the same way with my bamboo fly rods…oops! I mean, rod.
Since being cooped up (it’s been almost three weeks since Seamus and I smelled the fresh, clean, lung-biting air of Northern Michigan) I’ve been trying to busy myself with fly tying, teaching fly tying and helping at the MFFC kids tying booth at the fishing shows.
Having so much time on my hands, I tend to analyze things (that’s another way of saying, I’m out-thinking myself) and have come to the conclusion that, although this cyber space thing can teach, it can and is used as the consummate marketing tool. Everything I look at has an advertisement in it, next to it or sometimes on top of it. It’s like Saturday morning cartoons, which are basically infomercials for toys kids just won’t be happy without …which gives rise to, “The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys!”
I think fly fishing is being marketed out of existing for all but the well healed…but it doesn’t have to be. The key to keeping the sport at a basic level is, sharing what we know with newbies and not give the perception that anyone really cares what the brand of rod, reel, wader or nipper is. The proof is in the showing, not talking about it. In other words, just do it.
Boy oh boy, I better make a trip north soon.
TD