As If You Needed Proof That Corporate Fly Fishing is Upon Us
By Tom Chandler on May 11, 2007 in Opinion, Underground Entertainment
Today’s Dead Sucker Award (my new name for Underground Rants) comes courtesy of canoe.ca. And it must might represent the living embodiment of one of fly fishing’s least attractive stereotypes.
So hold your noses, and plunge into this sewage-laden passage:
It was a surreal adventure. One day last year, Ken McCagherty and three buddies arrived in Canmore, Alta. at 8:30 a.m., lattes in hand, to rendezvous with a helicopter that took them 20 minutes away to “the middle of nowhere”. They spent the day at 10,000 feet, on a mountain lake filled with cutthroat trout so plentiful “it was almost a fish a cast.” Come 4:30 p.m., they flew back to reality, and half an hour later they were eating dinner at a nice restaurant in town.
“What an experience,” reflects McCagherty, president and CEO of West Energy Ltd., a Calgary-based oil and gas exploration firm. After eight years of fly-fishing, it’s the adventure, relaxation and fellowship of fly-fishing that keeps him hooked.
“You become entranced with the art of the sport,” agrees Lou Maroun, executive chairman of ING Real Estate Canada, a real estate management firm based in Toronto. “It’s about the fly cast, the perfect selection of the fly, getting it in the right spot and controlling the line to make it do exactly what it should.”
Lattes in hand? Heli-fishing? Eating at the nicest restaurant in town by nightfall?
Most disturbing is the “Come 4:30 p.m., they flew back to reality”
statement. As if a gorgeous trout lake isn’t real, but linen napkins
and a four-star restaurant is.
Sounds like a rough, rough time for these manly outdoorsmen. (And am I the only one to notice that McCagherty is the CEO of an oil and gas exploration firm — a line of work not well known for its trout-friendly approach to the environment?)
Still, it gets worse. Meet fly fishing as corporate “team building” exercise:
For Scott Wilson and his colleagues, it was a different sort of team-building exercise that focused on learning new skills and building camaraderie.
“No one had been fly-fishing before so it was something different for all of us. And nobody mastered it in one day, but we had a good time and we learned from each other,” says Wilson, a partner at TWD Technologies, engineering consultants with offices in Burlington, Sarnia, Edmonton and Fort McMurray.
“I think it was better than just playing a round of golf, because everyone was on equal footing and that reinforces the teamwork that is so important to us.”
Nobody “mastered it in one day?” Shocking!
And exactly how does fly fishing — a sport where you hiss, throw rocks, and wish grievous bodily harm upon any other fly fisher in casting distance — become a “team building” exercise?
Undergrounders? kbarton? I’m open to suggestions. And thoughts about a name better than “Dead Sucker Award.”
Technorati Tags: fly fishing, fishing, team building, corporate asshats
Mike W. | May 11, 2007 | Reply
Do you have a barf bag that I could borrow?
C4C Raine | May 11, 2007 | Reply
How about “The Coveted Lamprey Award”? No one likes a lamprey, it suits the Nestle situation well, but I’m not so sure about these other corporate types…perhaps the “Whitefish Award,” the tagline could be something like “They Look Classy But Still Suck sh-Crap.” “Dead Carp” might do as well. That’s what I’ve got in regards to awards. As for the heli-fishing…the worst part is the contradictory ‘fish-a-cast’ and all that talk about ‘perfect fly/cast/spot and controlling the line.’ This guy probably can’t even control his bowels. Oh, hey we could just get blatant and slap ‘em with the one and only “Fat Sack ‘O Shit” award - if you haven’t noticed I’m starting to enjoy this award naming business.
Snowbug | May 11, 2007 | Reply
I’m evil. I’d LOVE to go anywhere in a helicopter. And eat at a great restaurant.
These 8 hour car trips to the closest fishing spot, eating only MickyD’s is getting me down.
Kevin | May 11, 2007 | Reply
The New Zealand Mud Snail Award.
Non-native, potentially ruining our sport, virtually unstoppable.
Or just stick with “The Weekly Nestle.”
Jim Webb | May 11, 2007 | Reply
Perhaps it may be one of fly fishing’s least attractive stereotypes, but for my money, the least attractive stereotype is that of the elitist, snobbish, holier-than-thou, know-trout-better-than-you, have-more-of-a-right-to-be-on-the-stream-than-you, you-and-I-don’t-share-the-same-sport stereotype of a fly fisherman.
Also, I think there could be nothing better for trout than having executives, who otherwise would have no personal knowledge of the streams, the sport, and the fish, get involved in the sport, in whatever way. Heli-fishing or not, if they stay with it, and become truly involved, they are bound to be influenced by some of us somewhere, sometime. That can only benefit the fish, and their environment.
The suggestion that they will heli-fish for one day, and then go back to the golf course and their executive suites, never to fly fish again, demeans the attractiveness of our sport.
Just my 2 cents worth. BTW, I am not an executive, and I don’t heli-fish.
Tom Chandler | May 11, 2007 | Reply
Jim: Good point, though I’d have to say that an oil exploration executive — whose company site makes not one mention of environmental policies or protections — is probably a poor poster boy for the “adventure, relaxation and fellowship” of fly fishing.
Fly fishing — like the rest of humanity — enjoys its share of pompous hoseheads bent on proving something through trout that they can’t prove in their everyday lives.
Still, this seems like a fairly egregious case, and I think it’s likely the “lattes in hand” that pushed me over the edge.
Jim Webb | May 11, 2007 | Reply
You don’t think that might be a bit of journalistic license, do you? I’m sure you don’t engage in such license, I mean, being a fisherman, and all.
kbarton10 | May 11, 2007 | Reply
In the 1970’s our beloved sport was rescued from these efeet, warmongering industrialists, festooned with Orvis tackle and tailored pantaloons by Schwabacher and Fry.
In those ugly days of insurgency, we referred to them as “Mr Abercrombie and Mr Fitch” - which was code for a fleshy, sunburned, big city swell, bowed by the weight of gadgetry, wincing from the dry fly imbedded in the fleshy part of their arse…
You met them, feigned interest when they pronounced the hatch “..a rare form of Paraleptophlebadie Canadensis”, noted the price tags still affixed to the tweezers, nippers, and vest, and in reponse to their inquiry - you showed them your “Canadensis Dry”, a #8 Parmachene Belle you had tucked away, for just such an occasion.
So, flyfishing being fashionable and all, we must endure this incursion again. This time I will let the mosquitos and sunburn escort Mr DickCheney OilBaron off the water at 4:30. This time, as I pass him on my way to the creek, I will doff my hat - because what the fat SOB doesn’t realize is - the best fishing doesnt start until 5:00.
(I saw the BatSignal, Commissioner Gordon!)
C4C Raine | May 11, 2007 | Reply
zinng! And the second round of the bout is off to a fast start, the crowd is wild!
I think that even with a journalistic license, this guys trying to market a particular group of people. And, let’s not forget that our country runs on capitalism…so without a doubt, these folks are looking for the green, not the welfare of the fish, or a particular self image. They’re aiming at someone’s ideals and desires, nothing more.
Capt Gordon | May 13, 2007 | Reply
Those guys suck
the butler | May 13, 2007 | Reply
Tommy,
My employer reads your posts with great interest. He has asked me to reply to the latest go-round with your readers and their views of elitists. So here it is:
There is proper equipment for fly fishing. And that’s that. It is not expensive compared to one’s time nor the expense of being a club member or leasing a good piece of water. It is not out of the question to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds a year for good fishing. If that is what one likes to do. A couple of thousand pounds is all that is necessary to spend for all one’s kit. A pittance, really. Doesn’t cost more than a good dinner in London with a few bottles of decent French Bordeaux!
You won’t rub elbows with an elitist on your trout stream. Your nattering about on the creek is with one of your own. Perhaps the chap has just hasmore money than you. Even your American real estate tycoon is not a true elitist. You know the fellow I refer to. He is the one with the awful haircut. He has money, but not much else. You see, he didn’t go to the right school. Your American schools are adequate, but not where a proper boy would educate himself. You see, the schools of yours are too new. No history, you see.
My employer truly loves to fish. It distresses him that some of your readership would think that elitests would stoop so low as to exchange affronts with a perfect stranger on a trout stream. That would be bad form, Tommy. Very bad
form. Just not done, you see?
The gentleman I work for enjoys taxonomy immensely. One need only read books written over the last 100 years to see that many of the aquatic insects that are of import to the fly fisher have changed genus, species, phylums, etc. during that time. Now that is interesting.
Your readers need to realize that the only reason they are fishing now a days is because their ancestors fought the King and won. Otherwise, they would still be poachers. You Americans are a testy lot, I’ll say. Fight at the drop of a hat. Good at it too, I must say. Your fellow even got poor Tony into your latest fray. And that was the end of his short career, you see. (Tony wasn’t allowed to go to a really good school over here, you see).
So, fight away, but please, fight amongst yourselves. Don’t bring the elitests into it. They want no part of it. That’s why they stay away from fishing Ireland for the most part. And finding one fishing public water? Really! I think not.
The gentleman’s butler
Jim Webb | May 13, 2007 | Reply
Tommy?
Tom Chandler | May 13, 2007 | Reply
This whole topic has zigged and zagged enough times that I’m going to invoke the Alberto Gonzales defense:
“I don’t recall writing this post, posting it, or even reading it, though I suppose it’s possible that one or more of those actions may or may not have — at one time or another — occurred, though again, I have no recall of their occurrence. I need a hug.”
C4C Raine | May 13, 2007 | Reply
I had the pleasure of listening to The Honorable Mr. Gonzales for an hour and a half. I think people just misunderstand him, that’s how ALL his speeches sound…