Would all sports – including fly fishing – attain a new sense of urgency if the price for failure was death?

Incentive to improve your fly fishing game?

Incentive to improve your fly fishing game?

Frankly, the Underground’s band of dropouts, slackers and drug users Editorial Board says yes. That’s why we’re at the forefront of a bold new initiative offering new life to the fly fishing industry (through the practice of visiting death sentences on those who fail).

We came upon this seemingly obvious idea via the factually based Onion News site, which wondered if pro sports wouldn’t be more entertaining if the losers were put to death (as was the practice only a few hundreds of years ago):

Sports Becomes Increasingly Boring As Death No Longer Punishment For Losing | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

According to prominent sports historians, the modern-day practice of allowing a losing team or athlete to live has significantly lessened the intensity of sports as a whole in the centuries since the execution of defeated competitors has fallen out of vogue.

“A shared awareness that the loser would be put to death raised the stakes and increased crowd involvement, to say nothing of its effect on the entertainment value of the match itself,” said Joachim Albrechtssen, professor of competitive outcome studies at Louisiana State University. “Sports today just can’t compete with that. If a Roman Colosseum audience saw Kobe Bryant miss a last-second shot, they would be unable to comprehend why he would not be stabbed to death, drawn and quartered, or burned alive, not to mention torn to shreds by the winning teams’ womenfolk.”

Frankly, I love the idea, and think we should translate it to fly fishing immediately. That would put a stop to all this “just nice to be out on the water” crap we hear from so many losers anglers.

And it would help the ailing fly fishing industry – currently mired in the slump that inevitably follows too much navel gazing and acronym marketing – drive sales of lucrative bead-head nymphs, bobicators, boring how-to books, and high-modulus, broomstick-stiff fly rods.

How would this next step in the evolution of fly fishing be put into practice?

Simple.

If you don’t catch fish, then you don’t eat for 48 hours (and neither does your family).

For a lot of anglers I see on the river, that punishment will eventually amount to certain death.

And because the Underground is truly a hotbed of bold thinkers (eat our dust, Greek philosophers), we have a suggestion: Why not institute this plan up and down fly fishing’s food chain?

Fly fishing guides would enjoy an immediate surge in bookings, though any guide that didn’t produce for their clients would be summarily stoned to death (imagine the surprise on the face of that rude, overbearing, Simms-wearing bastard when he’s standing there expecting a tip, and you “hand” him a rock going 37 mph instead…).

Fly shop owners who ran out of stonefly dries at the height of the best hatch in years would be dragged up and down the street in front of their shop, and their severed heads placed on poles at the upcoming AFFTA trade show to serve as a warning to others.

Fly fishing writers who culled information from message boards and then reported it as gospel truth – without any actual personal knowledge of the technique or information – would be stabbed repeatedly with a sharpened fountain pen.

And those who confidently reviewed fly fishing gear without using it for an extended period would find themselves forced to wear the summer-ripened, never-washed waders of slobbish Montana guides over their heads – a death sentence if ever we’ve heard one.

Naturally, manufacturers wouldn’t be spared.

Anyone who dumped a poorly engineered, $425 fly reel on the market (or a poorly engineered pair of wading boots, or a poorly designed $500+ fly rod) would one night find a dark stranger mysteriously knocking on their front door.

And magazine editors who ran the exact same cover photo over and over – using their bully pulpits to justify general industry woosiness – would be buried under several metric tons of their own back issues.

And finally, all fly fishing bloggers would be put to death immediately (just because, that’s why).

Naturally, as the architect of this Bold Plan For Adding Badly Needed Urgency to the Sport of Fly Fishing, I’d be exempt from the new rules.

That’s because – as someone who is clearly more intellectually advanced than the rest of the industry (I’d have to be to craft something this damned brilliant) – I alone am allowed to fill the ecological niche of effete, bamboo-waving, dry fly fishing blogger.

Frankly, my continued existence is a small price to pay for the revitalization of fly fishing – the sport where Catch & Release only applies to the fish, not the fishermen.

Of course, the Undergrounders are expected to contribute ideas to this burgeoning brain trust of brilliance.

Who should get it, and how?

See you at the guillotine, Tom Chandler.

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