Right on Paul Shep
----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Marriner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 9:48 AM Subject: Re: [VFB] Hanging Hardware on Your Flies > Last night I wrote a long rant about this subject, but becoming slightly > wiser with age I stuck it in the draft's folder for review this morning > before posting; it's now in the trash, mostly because it drifted way off > topic. > John's original question concerned what is a fly? If this question arose > in the UK it would generate much less interest. Many there (not all) > consider a fly to be an imitation of an aquatic or terrestrial insect, > everything else is a "lure." If one follows this reasoning things become > clear, and the entire debate revolves around the delivery system. > Take as an example the very popular Clouser Deep Minnow. It's a lure, > and is in no essential way different from a bucktail jig. One can > certainly cast a big Clouser with a light spinning outfit (more easily > than with most fly-rods). The converse is also true. If I use a casting > bubble and a Hexagenia dun pattern on a spinning rod, I could reasonably > consider myself to be fly-fishing. > So we have the following: > Fly-fishing with a fly-rod > Fly-fishing with a spinning rod > Lure fishing with a fly-rod > Lure fishing with a spinning or casting rod > > Even the one on which most people would agree, bait fishing, has gotten > murky, e.g. how does one treat a plastic spawn imitation impregnated > with scent? Nonetheless, I think everyone would agree that a > night-crawler, even if fished with a fly-rod, is bait fishing. > > Can we roll the clock back to sort this out? Not a chance. Only a silly > sense of snobbery distinguishes between the angler fishing a weighted > nymph with shot on the leader and under a bobber with a fly rod in her > hand and another angler fishing exactly the same rig with a spinning rod > in his. Both, or neither, are fly-fishing depending on where you want to > draw an imaginary line. > > Cheers, > Paul > > -- > Paul Marriner > Outdoor Writing & Photography. Member OWAA & OWC. Author of Atlantic > Salmon, Ausable River Journal, Miramichi River Journal, and Modern > Atlantic Salmon Flies.
