This has been a really interesting topic, thanks for starting it!
However, I always enjoy it when this subject comes up, because it always seems to go back to the "rich and famous", who own the gear and us "Po' Folk" who use Medalist...... So, the "Rich" give the sport a bad name and "The Medalist" gives it its true meaning!??
It reminds me of a trip Bishop and I made a few years ago,when we were in Montana. We'd fished long and hard, the sun was at high-noon and the fishing had gone slack. As we walked the stream, we'd stepped over several UNPOSTED barbed wire fences. As we rounded a bend, there was a lady walking along the stream, hands full of wild flowers.
We approached her, got talking, and to make a long story, longer..... ended up having "egg salad sandwiches and lemon aide" with Jane Fonda, that afternoon, in the Turner home. The way Bishop and I "LOOK" when we go fishing, I'd have had us arrested, just on appearances alone. But, Ms.Fonda was kinder than that, thankfully.
We did not get into any "political discussions", or talk about the way Ted's closed off so damn much water to local and visiting, fishermen. I,still, to this day, hate the guy for it.
Like someone, else, posted............... "I'm too poor to pay attention", but I also still manage to travel to decent water quite often and the gear I own is all, pretty much, "good". Whatever that means?!
I've owned the top of the line Sage rods, until I realized "they felt super great to me, in hand".................... ONLY because I WANTED THEM to "feel super great in my hand, because I'd paid so much for them!! They never threw line any better than my other rods, costing half as much.
Flyfishing becomes "an ego thing" way too easily, unfortunately, for so many. Besides Bishop, my everyday, regular fishing "partners" are men like Henry Hoffman.- (my next door neighbor),Dave Hughes and if I'm in Idaho..... Al and Gretchen B. SO?? Exactly......... THEY may have excellent, high end gear, I DON'T own half of what these people do, but we still have a great time and if it's a "good day" I'll equal their fish counts, no problem.
Flyfishing, to ME anyway.... Is only what YOU make it and what, exactly, YOU "want it to be". I've found that these "walking Orvis and Sage shops", that climb out of the Escalades, are usually the types that want "instant gratification" just like in their high-end business lives and if the fish don't see it their, way, they so easily give up our sport as "A waste of time and money" and go back to handball and golf soon enough.
If fly fishermen never got together to talk, never met at the fly shop's counter, to shoot the breeze, we'd ALL be fly fishing with fiberglass, #1494s and have a hell of a lot more money in the bank, believe me...........
