Mike Ormsby

There was a post on a fly fishing forum about fly fishing snobs and how one told if you were a snob or not. I thought of the quote I'd read somewhere once about fly fishers being snobs as far as looking down their noses at other anglers, like spin fishermen or bait casters. That they see fly fishing as the pure form of fishing, the most beautiful way of catching a fish, the sweetest science of angling. And that of fly fishers, dry fly fishermen were the biggest snobs since they saw themselves as the purest of fly anglers. Well that thought caused me a problem -- I don't like to think of myself as any sort of snob -- but I do love to fly fish almost exclusively -- and I do prefer drifting a dry fly to a rising trout.

Then I thought of another quote by John Gierach that always made me think of what others might consider "snobbish" fly fishers:


"Fly fishermen would descend on the stream like information-gathering modules, sprouting collective nets, specimen bottles, and stream thermometers, and could often be heard muttering to each other in some foreign language I later discovered to be Latin."

But then I realized I knew Latin terms such as:

Amelitidae (for Brown Duns), Baetidae (for Blue-Winged Olives), Baetiscidae (for Armored Mayflies), Caenidae (for Angler?s Curses), Ephemerellidae (for Hendricksons, Sulphurs, PMDs, BWOs), Ephemeridae (for Hexes and Big Drakes), Heptageniidae (for March Browns, Cahills, Quill Gordons), Isonychiidae (for Slate Drakes), Leptohyphidae (for Tricos), Leptophlebiidae (for Black Quills and Blue Quills) and Metretopodidae (for Pseudo-Gray Drakes) -- and this just for Mayflies (or Family Ephemeroptera).

Damn does knowing all these Latin terms really mean I've become a "fly fishing snob" myself?!?!?!? Or did those Biology classes actually come in handy after all???? LOL LOL


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"Fly fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with aesthetic considerations. It?s not even clear if catching fish is actually the point." -John Gierach