Ken Fortenberry wrote:
Herman Nijland wrote:

snip
I even fish maggots on a flyrod if it delivers the goods, and I
couldn't care less if it's called flyfishing or not.


Well, FYI, it's not, it's called bait fishing. There's nothing wrong
with that, where legal, but it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi that
real fly fishing has in abundance.

I know. It's just called fishing in my book. I love to fish dries to a
rising trout. I also love casting streamers for bass, and I get a kick
of taking the kids fishing with a long pole with bobber and maggots for
whatever fish. I must admit that the maggots on a flyrod were a bit of a
troll :-).
It is rare that I get the chance to fish a nice river for trout and
grayling, so I make do with what's there. In my case it's the river
Rhine, which has been heavily polluted until some twenty years ago. The
fish stocks are not bad, there are all kinds of coarse fish around, and
even the odd seatrout or salmon if you're extremely utterly lucky.
Fishing small streamers can produce anything from rudd, roach or ide to
yellow perch, asp, pike and zander. Not 'offical gamefish' at all, but
so effin' hard to fool so now and then with fur and feather. I love to
catch them on fly, but I don't want to be limited to that.
I gave up on being a flyfisher. I am a fisher, there's way too much fun
to be had to stick to upstream dry fly only or whatever mental rulebook.


If you want to fish with bait, where legal, that's cool. I enjoy
sitting in a lawn chair, Budweiser at the elbow, waiting for the
tip of my rod to move ever so slightly when a catfish takes the
big gob of worms I've heaved out into the Mississippi River.

But that's not fly fishing either and when I fish that way I've
found that my feces is malodorous, whereas when I fly fish it is
not. ;-)


Whatever rocks your boat. Basically, I think we don't even disagree.
Much. Still, I doubt that the fish will notice the difference :-).

--
Herman