A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons by Steve Raymond

Author:Steve Raymond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

BETTER THAN STRAWBERRIES

THERE’S AN old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Assuming the truth of that statement, then its logical extension is that a lot of knowledge can be even more dangerous. It can, for example, get you invited to speak to an audience of people who are all more knowledgeable than you are.

That happened to me a few years ago. By then I’d written several fly-fishing books, edited two fly-fishing magazines, and spoken at what seemed like an endless series of fishing-club meetings, conferences, and conclaves. That résumé apparently was what got me invited to speak at a university graduate seminar on ocean resource management, where everyone in the audience would have more education than I did. It occurred to me that it would probably have been more appropriate for me to be listening to them instead of the other way around. However, it did seem probable they hadn’t had as much fishing experience as I did, especially with a fly rod, which might give me at least a chance to hold my own. In fact, some of the students—maybe even all of them—might never have been fishing at all.

The seminar was at the University of Washington, my alma mater, and I’d been asked to share my views of how sport fishing should fit into the management of ocean resources. It seemed like a big responsibility, since these future resource managers might never have another opportunity to learn about the cultural and economic importance of sport fishing, or how it should fit into the many demands the world makes on its oceans. For that reason, I spent considerable time researching and preparing what I would say. My research yielded some useful numbers, now long obsolete (they were generated mostly in 1991 and 1996), but I’ve left them unchanged here because they served so well to illustrate the points I was trying to make and lined up in such a nicely coincidental manner that I was able to use them for a couple of tongue-in-cheek observations.

Somewhat to my surprise, the highly educated young people in the audience seemed very attentive and interested in what I had to say and asked some very good questions. I think we learned from each other, and it was a good experience for me and, I hope, for them.

Here’s what I said:

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