Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 153 A s someone given to occasional moments of introspection, I've been thinking about the difference a quarter-century has made to my—and more broadly, to our—fly fishing. I suspect most folks would focus on the obvious improvements to gear and tackle (modern graphite rods, for example, as well as Gore-Tex waders and rain jackets), along with the sheer number of new anglers who have joined the sport over the last 25 years. There's also the ever-expanding diversity of species (from bonefish to tarpon to sailfish to permit to pike to muskie to bass to carp) that has come into play as our angling options have grown. The times, as Bob Dylan wrote all those years ago, they are a-changin'. It's funny, but while all of these shifts are relatively important, I'm convinced that the single biggest difference between 1991 and 2016 is our decades-long slide into the electronic age. Instead of reading how-to articles, we watch instructional videos on YouTube. Rather than grabbing the phone book and calling the local fly shop, we jump on their website and check the latest fishing report. We use our computers and smartphones to keep an eye on river levels and tomorrow's weather. We're inundated with emails from fishing manufacturers who want to sell us new gear, as well as text messages from buddies who eagerly share photos of their latest Madison River brown trout or the permit they just landed on their annual trip to Belize. In a very real sense, we've gone from the sounds of silence to a never-ending cacophony; from a rotary phone to a 24/7 direct immersion in angling Wi- Fi. I'm sure that, as with most sea- changes, there are both positives and negatives aligned with this new reality. The really fascinating thing, though, is that we don't seem to think about, or talk about, this seismic shift. Life has changed, it's out with the old and in with the new, and now it's time to move on. Nowhere is this more evident than social media. fly fishing by todd tanner SOCIAL MEDIA HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT FORUM FOR PROTECTING OUR WATERS AND WILD PLACES. I'm not someone who typically lines up to try the "new thing"—whatever the "new thing" may be. I came late to Facebook, and even later to Twitter, and I'm not on Instagram, much less Pinterest or Tumblr or Snapchat. In fact, I don't even know what Pinterest or Tumblr or Snapchat are supposed to do for me. But I've been using Facebook long enough to have a pretty good feel for it and the concept of social media. Honestly, it's been a roller-coaster ride for the last four or five years. Think about it. I didn't know when I signed up for Facebook that I was going to be inundated with people sharing pictures of their cats, and with other people telling me that I was voting for the wrong politicians, and with pretty much everyone taking "selfies" and sharing them with every single human being they've ever met. (There's actually something onerous about the word "selfie," as if whoever coined the phrase knew damn well that it was going to annoy me—and then did it anyway.) jeffbergen/istockphoto.com