Not long ago Angling Trade magazine sent out a survey to get a clearer understanding of "the market." They asked retailers what percentage of their "total business involves or revolves around products that are either designed specifically for, or can be applied to, fly fishing for trout."

That phrase "or can be applied to" kills it in my view. There's precious little fly fishing equipment of any sort that cannot be applied to fishing for trout. Sure, the rods used for marlin or sailfish, but how many people actually do that? In my (not so) humble opinion, they have revealed their trout-centric bias just in the way they phrased the question. I think the magazines share that bias (probably because their advertisers share that bias).

If you made a map of the US, and shaded the trouty areas in green and the non trouty areas in yellow, I'm pretty sure you'd see a lot more yellow than green. And you know, even where there are trout, they are generally not the only fish you can catch. Note to Angling Trade (and magazine editors and advertisers): There's a lot more to fly fishing than just fly fishing for trout!

A couple weeks ago, a friend and I spent a day trying to see how many different species of fish we could catch (specifically, how many we could catch on a black Killer Bugger, for a contest I issued a while ago in the TenkaraBum Challenge). We both caught ten species - and not the same ten. Between the two of us, we caught fourteen species of fish - only one of which was a trout.

Here's my account of the day - Trip Report - 6-22-14