Fishing - Really a shame

On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 10:34:56 -0000, Anonymous
wrote:

Difficult to follow all this, but Mike is right, you sure are
a bunch of mean spirited people. You provoke and accuse him,
and when he replies, you attack him again. Certainly a good
reason not to post here, if this is what you people do to
your "friends". Mike is not the laughing stock here, you are.
Pitiable as well. No good reason for any decent people to even
consider subscribing to this group. Still strange that one or
two real pigs can get a whole group contaminated like this.

Most of this foruum is North American. Yes, it is not exclusively NA,
but most of the posters and the info/experience is from the States or
Canada. Mike has never fished in North America. Most of his
experience is in Germany/UK. He has never fished Montana, Alaska,
Canada, Idaho, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, etc. He has no
knowledge of these places except what he reads on the internet.

The people who post here *do* have that experience, and they are more
than experts at giving advice about fishing North America. I have no
doubt that Mike is an expert fisherman, but it is hard to believe he
knows more about fishing in Idaho than RW, or Tom L about fishing in
Penn. Everyone who has participated in this thread has posted
wonderful trip reports about fishing these wonderful waters. As far
as I know, Mike has never really posted a trip report, or if he has,
it wasn't very exciting. If time and money were of no concern, I
would rather fish Penns with Tom L., The Middle Fork of the Salmon
with RW, and any of Oregon's wonderful waters with Janik or JR than
travel to Germany and fish those waters with MC.

Mike has a good history on roff. Some years ago he gave two rods that
he built as raffle prizes for Wally's Spring Fling clave in the
mountains of NC. We took pictures of the roffians at that clave, I
bought a very expensive frame, framed the pix and sent it to Mike. I
believe I also sent a hat. He in turned sent me about a dozen dry
flies that were well designed and tied, and caught fish. But there
was nothing special about all of this. It was normal behavior *at the
time*.

I don't know exactly what happened to Mike, but he became very upset
over something and started calling folks names, including the infamous
"Dumbo" to Tom Littleton, simply, I believe, because we disagreed with
what he posted. His rant on homosexuality was not very welcome by the
liberals on this ng and he seemed to self destruct right before our
eyes. It has to be Mike's way or it isn't legitimate as demonstrated
by the matching line thread when his advice was useless to a newbie.
It might have been good advice to *all* of us, but not the newbie.
Mike should have written a paper on it and posted it in a separate
thread instead of confusing the novice who asked the question.

People on this foruum resent Mike sticking his nose in and saying
things that just aren't necessary, only to show how enlightened he is
concerning fly fishing. Again, the thread about line weights is a
perfect example. A newbie wants to know what line goes with a 4
weight rod? A 4 weight line. Simple. Two roffians answered the
novice's question, only to be over-ruled by Mike's verbose and pompous
disertation on shooting heads and putting an 8 weight line on a four
weight rod. Don't you think that newbie was just a little confused?

There are lots of things that one should not bring up on roff,
including politics, sexual orientation, long winded answers, and
pompous replies. If you cross that line, be prepared to fight to
defend your opinion. And if you stomp off in a big hissy fit, it is
never forgotten. Believe me, I know. Mike should accept roff for
what it is - a bunch of good guys sitting on a cabin's porch in out of
the rain talking about fishing and life itself. And *everyone* has an
opinion about *everything*. If Mike can not take criticism, he
shouldn't post here.

That was more than $0.02. Sorry.