How Do You Sell A Sport You Can't Define?
Earlier this week, a reporter called to write an article about the Trout Underground, and just as the conversation started, Wally the Wonderdog wandered slowly past my office window -- holding a stiffly frozen, snow-encrusted squirrel in his mouth.
I considered telling the reporter about the squirrel-cicle, but then realized it really wasn't that believable; the kind of thing a guy would make up to impress a reporter.
Moments like this force me to realize that much of the Underground's universe -- especially the bits concerning Wally the Wonderdog -- simply aren't fit for print.
Or maybe they're just not readily explainable.
And that was only the
start of the interview. It wasn't long before he asked the inevitable, grind-my-brain-to-halt question:
"What is the Trout Underground?"And, like every other time I've been asked, I had no answer -- at least nothing that glibly approaches a sound bite (outside of the ill-advised "I'm simply oversharing my mental illness").
Part of the problem lies with the sport itself; beyond the gear used (and that's up for grabs these days), fly fishing is pretty hard to define.
Even Gierach -- who writes far more gooder than I -- refuses to be cornered:
"Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It's not even clear if catching fish is actually the point."
It gets worse.
A quick survey of the Internet suggests catching fish actually
is the point fly fishing, but for some (an awful lot, actually), it clearly isn't.
Others accumulate fly fishing gear and clearly think that's the point, while others embrace minimalism as the One True Path to Heaven.
For others, it's all about being miserable, and reminding everyone just how tough they are to withstand the suffering, or...
You get the picture.
Recruiting new people to the sport has never proved all that easy, with some quick to point to things like the high cost of equipment (ever compared the cost of a fly rod && reel to a bass boat?), the notorious stuffiness of the sport's practitioners, surly fly shop employees, the fussiness (and shrinking habitat) of trout, the technical demands of casting, etc.
Here's a thought; maybe it has nothing to do with any of the above.
Maybe it's hard to sell a sport that you can't really define.
Unlike tournament bass fishing (or golf, or whatever), fly fishing's goals are a little unclear, and for some of us, they shift over the course of a day.
Which is a long-winded way of making myself feel better about an inability to clearly define the blog I've been writing for better than 720,000 words, especially after the reporter asked me to pick a couple of highlights (posts) from the prior year.
I ended up picking three posts that felt like they represented the blog, then realized that one was definitely
not about fly fishing, and two that were about fly fishing kinda dealt with it in the periphery (OK, they were all about
Little M, though fly fishing featured
heavily in this one and
here).
A sport with shifting goals? Blogs with no visible point? An writer's inability to summarize 720,000 words of his own work?
Frankly, it's enough to make me want to wander off and find a beer.
Maybe watch Wally the Wonderdog eat his squirrel-cicle.
Right now, that makes perfect sense.
See you outside, Tom Chandler.