From my perspective as someone who has not been monitoring mass media headlines for almost a week, getting up this morning — and checking the headlines on my smartphone — was a little jarring:

  • Police Say Neighbor Confessed in Death of Indiana Girl
  • Ten Arrested in Mall of America Riot
  • Fireplace Blamed For Deadly Connecticut House Fire
  • Sinead O’Connor Ends Marriage After 16 Days
  • Reward Offered For Lead in Missing Maine Toddler Case

I kinda wish I hadn’t looked.

Over here in Paradise, the wind has been blowing pretty damned hard every day, and even the sailboats moving along the beach haven’t bothered to raise their sails.

Pretty clearly, this part of Hawaii is not a fly fishing hot spot (you’ll never be confronted with one of those giant schools of bonefish as in the Bahamas), but equally clearly, there’s more here than meets the eye.

During yesterday’s trip to the local kid-friendly beach, I saw a lot of baitfish and what appeared to be a couple of Jack Crevalle hovering along some offshore rocks at yesterday’s beach.

(Little M went face-to-face with an unafraid-of-humans sea turtle, forever sealing her love of the great shelled beasts).

Later, the Registered Maine Guide — whose judgment you really don’t question unless you’re an arrogant fool — suggested a couple of bonefish moved through the area while he was snorkeling another pile of offshore rocks.

The beach was crowded with people and it is manifestly not a bonefish flat, but it’s proof of what I’ve long said; given enough time and a little willingness to look beyond the obvious you probably can scrape up some decent fishing almost anywhere.

When I lived in the Bay Area, I fished a small dam outlet for carp, fished the lake above the dam for crappie, fished the tiny creek below the dam for trout, fished a nearby small lake for bluegill, float tubed a couple slightly bigger lakes for bass, and was even thrown out of an apartment complex after fishing the “decorative” pond for carp.

In most cases you won’t be selling articles about apartment pond carp to the larger fly fishing media, but to let that dampen your enthusiasm is to make the mistake of conflating the health of the sport with the health of the industry.

Just because it’s not cover material doesn’t mean it isn’t fun.

One of my regrets about naming this blog The Trout Underground has been the exclusivity of the title; I moved to a place where 95% of my fishing is for trout (smallmouth bass can be found at a local lake), and while I’m happy with that that life-altering decision, the name has always felt a little exclusionary — a little too highbrow for the kind of reader I’m hoping to attract.

Trout are great fish and they’re usually found in gorgeous places, but they’re far from the only reason to pick up a fly rod.

I know (and so do you) fly fishermen who bemoan the lack of fly fishing available to them because they don’t live in a mecca like Montana, and I always wondered how much of a role fly fishing’s magazines — and yes, blogs named “The Trout Underground” — play in that perception.

Are these people whining because they’re elitists, and therefore uninterested in crappie or bass or bluegills (a perception helped along by exotic destination stories and living-in-the-mountains bloggers)?

Or have they simply never looked at the nearby browlines, or read Singlebarbed’s posts about the joys of Pikeminnows?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know it’s one of the questions worth asking, especially because others — noting the lack of commercial potential — aren’t going to.

As always, the floor belongs to the Undergrounders. My availability is limited until my return, but being grownups and all, that’s never stopped you.

Posted in Travel.