THE CODE - Neil - November 8, 2010

[rtidd]

THE CODE

?House for Sale; - Cute bungalow on a quiet cul-de-sac in a good neighborhood.? You know what it says, and if you have been around the block at least once you know what it means. ?Cute? should be translated small, or more precisely, very small. ?Quiet cul-de-sac? means that the neighbors only throw wild parties every other week, and a ?good neighborhood? simply means that it is unlikely that your neighbors will shoot you but make certain that you lock your car!

[flyguy66]

The one that kills me is the constant claim nowadays that a fly rod/fly line was specifically built to excel beyond all competitors/previous models in both distance and presentation.

[Ray Kunz]

Very well done. I only wish you had extended the thought about commercial motivation to specifically include fly tying materials. On an item by item basis the monetary concern is nowhere as great as for rods or reels but the accumulative effect is significant. It would seem that every vendor will repackage the same, or nearly identical material, add a tricky name and promote it as something really unique.
The creative tyers among us then proceed to make matters worse by calling out extremely specific components in their recipes. This might be important if we were to trying to tie exact copies of a fly but if we really want to make only a cosmetic copy for fishing the detail is unwarranted. I think the same applies to specific hook make and model numbers.
Do the fish really care? If a highway patrolman stops you for speeding do you think he cares about the make of your car? If it looks like a car and is speeding like a car, it must be a speeding car.