Over at the message board at the Wisconsin Fly Fishing Page
(wisflyfishing.com) there has been a somewhat acrimonious debate
concerning the planned fly fishing (as opposed to fly casting) contest
that is going to be held on one of the spring creek near Madison in
conjunction with ESPN's Great Outdoor Games. The board is divided into
several camps. One says that this is a great thing. That it will
increase awareness of fly fishing, add to the local tourism coffers
and expose Wisconsin's great fishing to the world. Another camp says
this is a terrible thing. They say that this will reduce fly fishing
to the status of bass tounaments, that little or none of the money
generated will actually benefit the cold water fishery and that it
will expose Wisconsin's great fishery to the world. My own take on it
is that it will probably be considered a minor event by most viewers,
who will be watching what appears to be from the published schedule
hours and hours of log rolling. My question to this group, seeing that
the level of acrimony has been sinking to dangerous levels, is what do
you think of fly fishing contests, ESPN's in particular and the whole
genre in general?


g.c.

By the way Wolfgang et al, you missed some great fishing at the WFFP
Spring Clave. There were times when the river seemed to be inhabited
by schools of 12 to 16 inch red and black spotted porpoises, with
dozens of trout in each pool doing head to tail rolls as they were
taking the sulphur emergers. Truly awesome. I did alright, with most
of my fish coming off a snowshoe hare winged emerger. It seemed to
work best though when fished with an active retrieve. It probably was
a way to make the fish take notice of the fly when surrounded by
thousands of naturals. How did you and Joel make out...er...do
fishing?