Observations from Down Under - Lighter Side

What is life if there is not laughter?
Welcome to the lighter side of flyfishing! We welcome your stories here!

June 24th, 2002

The Twelve Steps of Fly Fishers Anonymous

By Cary Morlan

Publisher’s Note: Cary sent this in response to
the Castwell article FFA, if you missed it, click
HERE.

  1. We admitted that we were powerless over our
    addiction, that our lines had become unmanageable.

  2. We came to believe that fishing only local
    waters could restore us to sanity.

  3. We made a decision to turn the choice of our
    fishing days over to our significant other.

  4. We made a searching and fearless inventory of our
    vest and pared it down to only one wet box and one dry box.

  5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human
    being the exact nature of the fabricated stories we are compelled
    to share with others.

  6. We were entirely ready to have God remove these self
    aggrandizing fables from our memory.

  7. We humbly asked him to remove other anglers from our
    favored waters that the fish may still be there for us when
    we choose to relapse.

  8. We made a list of all fish we had killed and became
    willing to do volunteer work for our local TU chapter’s
    stream restoration project.

  9. We made direct amends to Landowners whose property
    rights we had violated wherever possible, except when to
    do so would injure us.

  10. We continued to take our personal inventory and when we
    were wrong about what hatch was coming off we promptly admitted it.

  11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve
    our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying
    only for knowledge of Bamboo rod making and the power to buy
    materials in small quantities.

  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these
    steps, we tried to carry this message to fly fishers, and to
    practice our double haul in secluded areas so as not to look
    like a show off. ~ Cary Morlan (Linemender).


Originally published June 24th, 2002 on Fly Anglers Online by Cary Morlan.