Today I was in the area of a special-regulations creek that I sometimes like to visit, so I made a quick stop, fishing for maybe an hour or so. I didn't catch them today, but that was OK. I was happy to just walk beside the creek a little, and I had wanted to check out the action of a new lure.
As I was walking toward the truck, a fully decked out fly-fisherman passed going toward the creek. I greeted him and he nodded and asked whether I'd caught fish.
"I didn't get 'em today," I replied.
"That's good," he answered, with no hint of joke in his voice.
Maybe it was straight-toned humor that I didn't quite pick up. Maybe I misunderstood.
I don't think so, though. I think he was glad that I didn't catch fish because I was carrying a spinning rod. If so, I find that disappointing. Stream regs call for catch-and-release and single-hook artificial lures only. Although the stream is most popular with fly-fisherman, it's not a fly-fishing only stream. I not only had a single-hook artificial lure, but my hook was barbless, which is not required by the law.
It believe it can only be bad when we start deeming our own way of fishing as superior to someone else's. Hopefully my perception was wrong, but it did cause me to think a little and to be careful abut how I come across to other anglers and non-anglers alike. So maybe that's a good thing.
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