(pssst…and I know a shop in China where we can have them made to order and air shipped to any address in the US for about $10 each. so the margins are awesome!)

As for the idea of competitive fly fishing, it hasn’t happened thus far because:
Men who stand in flowing cold water over their thighs for long periods may be less interesting or interested in the opposite sex – and sex sells.
Until recent years, waders were baggy, ungainly, and not too unlike the clown wear mentioned in the article. Now they are form-fitting, come in a range of tasteless colors, and accentuate the paunch of many of us with whom gravity has dealt unkindly. Add to the waders all the assorted baubles, fripperies, and geegaws that dangle from our overstuffed vests and a figure emerges that can scarce be taken seriously.

Must rush, the FBI has me on call-waiting.

Best regards,
Reed

For starters, my online economics buddy suggested that’s a pretty weak growth rate over eight years (2.25% per year).

Once you factor in more expensive fly rods, reels, fly lines, guide trips, etc — and declining participation — it’s safe to say that revenues might have gone up, but unit sales probably haven’t.

And that’s ignoring all the questions of deferred industry debt (lifetime warranties on fly rods) and growth in the number of suppliers (if supplier growth exceeds industry growth, then it’s possible more are making less).

As the economics whiz put it to me: we’ve got fewer participants supporting an industry by buying ever-more expensive goods.

That ain’t healthy, and I really would love to see unit sales vs revenues for the last couple years. I’ll bet the last 2-3 years haven’t been pretty.

Regardless of its current state, growth in competitive fly fishing would be good for the industry, so they can be expected to promote it.

It’s left to each fly fisher to decide how they feel about it, but they should so without the false blinders of nationalistic and “saving the future of the sport” arguments.

Great comments on this thread — except that last one by Reed. In a single post, he likely plunged the Underground into the vortex of an International Incident and got my phone tapped.

Nice going, buddy.

I appreciate the invitation and sincerely wish that I could join you on your streams, but the physical challenges are beyond my aging capacity. Oh, I could manage the wading and the casting; however, to do both while keeping my left eyebrow raised and a perpetual sneer on my lips is, I fear, impossible to me. Graceful hauteur is a sport unto itself, combining it with any other and performing both simultaneously would tax the powers of any brutish American. It is like asking a one-armed, mono-pedal waiter to carry and decant the Port without raising sediment while also juggling the glasses.

I once expressed bemusement over a piece of cutlery presented to me prior to the fish course at a small restaurant in Lyon. My host and friend, with only a trace of his Breton accent and a slight curling of the lip said “Perhaps when we French introduced Americans to haute cuisine we should have included a manual on the utensils as well.” (I still writhe at the skillfulness of the thrust.) How can we possibly compete with that? Take but a moment to consider our President, our chosen representative to the world community, and his conversational adroitness. We despair.

Best regards,
Reed

I’ve been wondering about all this shrinking/growing talk lately, so I went to some authoritative market research organizations for answers.

According to the Fly Fishing Market in the U.S. survey, there has been an 18.1% growth in fly fishing equipment and clothing sales since 1998.

But conversely, the percentage of Americans who fly fish have dropped by more than 12% during the same basic time span. (USFWS data corroborated by FFRTA and other outdoor industry market research orgs)

So fewer people are spending more money…considerably fewer and considerably more!

So the bottom line is that profitability for the mfg’s has INCREASED with fewer consumers who are easier to reach buying more stuff.

The whole notion of needing hype and blatant commercialism to ward off doom is a myth propagated by the few who support the tournament nonsense and the hyper-mercantilism.

Face it; during the boom years, the more expensive it was, the better it sold. Those years are over, and you can’t support a whole industry on $650 fly rods with lifetime warranties.

“What’s next” the manufacturers wonder — their eyes gazing longingly at the hyper-merchandising frenzy that is competitive bass fishing…

I wonder how many of us even WANT fly fishing to “mushroom?” I sure don’t.