Deep Thoughts #10 - Sorry, Gonna be a Buzzkill Here for a Moment….

Schmidtties?

Let me preface what follows by saying that I am not a teetotaler by any means, and to be honest I have one failed college attempt in my late teens and a DUI in my early 30s to offer as my bona fides.  Perhaps my age and experience and history make me more attuned to this, and I am sorry if I ruin anyone’s reading pleasure or make them get too self-reflective (or reflexive) about their own habits.

Alcoholism runs in the far-from-glamorous, seasonally-depressing, and anxiety-ridden guiding business for sure (and on the Irish side of my family—three of my four sides are Irish, too).  I have avoided that issue myself (arguably, says the aforementioned DUI expunged from my record after ARD classes).  

All this preamble is to ask, is anyone else getting a bit suspicious and/or tired of the alcohol “product placement” in every bit of fly fishing media??

I am the father of a 16-year-old, and I was probably a 16-year-old boy who ravenously read fishing magazines around the time when beer and alcohol ads were getting banned for good reasons from publications in the US.  Now The Drake, Fly Fisherman, and others have to get creative and slip beer ads into the book and website review sections or something.   I have seen fishing-themed beer reviews in several places: “Best Beers After a Long Day of Fishing” or some shit like that…

And there is mention of alcohol in over half of the articles, sometimes more than half!  In a recent Drake there was a story that was more about sipping beer than catching largemouth, as if the beer was necessary even though it made dude miss fish because he was paying more attention to the beer than the fishing.  A cheap laugh, basically, one my 16-year-old self might have found funny.  Not five pages later, a story about fishing-themed watering holes….

Pun, see?

Don’t even get me started on the beer companies who put fish on the label and then give some pittance of profits to the environment.  That is the equivalent of check-out line donations and receipt roundups: “Target gave 1 million dollars of its customers’ money to a charity because we care…”  Just donate from your record profits if you care so much.  Rep my Member, Rep my Water!  But I digress….

Lastly, is it a chicken or the egg thing?  Did every writer turn to this lazy-ass trope about having a drink before, after, and/or during a fishing experience to make the experience complete?   Or is there backdoor influence by the industry that has seeped into our brains and now makes its way onto the page whenever a writer needs a quick way to ingratiate himself to a reader—hmmm…we all drink, so I need to work in a drinking reference here!

Even kind of looks like edible weed packaging, you know?

Legalized cannabis is next, of course, and I am working tirelessly in the lab to formulate some edibles that look just like thingamabobbers.  Sorry to be a buzzkill, but something is up, perhaps innocent, perhaps a bit more insidious, but either way the youth and this old man are watching and learning.  For what it's worth I am going to send a version of this letter to The Drake and maybe post on PAFF after I run it by Dave Kile.

Cheers, everyone!