snakefiddler wrote:

... i already have a feeling that this may be a sensitive subject, ...

Yes Daisy Mae, this is a sensitive subject.

My experience is fairly typical of most American fly fishermen
before "The Movie". I started fishing as a child with a cane pole,
a worm, and a red & white bobber, then graduated to a Zebco 33
closed face spinning reel then a Garcia Mitchell spinning rig and
finally, when I was 11, my dad gave me one of his old fly rods.

The whole progression is one of increasingly difficult to acquire
skill sets with fly fishing as the pinnacle. Many of us who came
to fly fishing in this way consider fly fishing to be not just one
way of fishing, but the best way and the most difficult to master.

Are we elitists to believe this ? Well, I am. I am an elite among
fishermen and it would be ridiculous to deny it. Some of the folks
on this newsgroup are elite fishermen but cannot bear the thought
of being labeled an elitist. That's a useful distinction for some,
by the way, the distinction between an elite and an elitist, but
for me it's a distinction with little difference.

Your chucklehead friends are jealous of fly fishermen and that's
pretty much the natural order of things. Let them be jealous.
There's not a thing in the world wrong with being an elitist
fisherman.

--
Ken Fortenberry