Fishing openers are for real anglers, not scribblers

 Several writers in the Star Tribune have recently managed to get their underwear in a bunch over this year’s Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener. I read both columns and was embarrassed to see the Strib reduced to publishing such snits. I’m intentionally not linking because I don’t want to help promote such retrograde thinking and writing.

As I read them, although ymmv, this year the opener won’t be providing all the junkett fringe benefits outdoor scribes have become accustomed to, they won’t be spoon fed story lines and they may actually have to think about what fishing means in contemporary Minnesota to families comprised of real people and not just “rugged outdoorsmen.”

sharing trout waters

Photo by J. Harrington

Since last month was National Women’s History Month, I should have posted this then, but I wasn’t annoyed about male self-centeredness complaining about intrusion into the “old boys’ club” at that point. Our state is lucky to have the following:

• Women Anglers of Minnesota (WAM) “supports women and children in the sport of fishing. With a 45-year history and over 900 members, we offer an educational, safe, and supportive environment that seeks to connect anglers of all experience levels and ages.” 
• Fly Fishing Women of Minnesota “are here to help women unravel the mysteries of fly fishing. An Affiliate Club of Fly Fishers International” 
• Women on the Fly, a Minnesota Steelheader's program

I’ve long been a member of Trout Unlimited and am particularly pleased by its recognition that “The majority of TU members are and always have been male, but the ranks of female TU members are growing, and we know that many TU member households include spouses and other family members who also fish and care about conservation.” I may be biased by the fact that my mom did more to get me outdoors and into fishing since dad was in those years involved in a “police action” regarding North Korea. My spouse fishes and supports conservation. My daughter fishes and is involved in conservation. I’m doing all I can think of to be sure my granddaughter will be able, and want to, get involved in fishing and conservation. 

Although I don’t regularly read either of the writers castigated at the beginning of this posting, neither do I remember either of them writing much about the growing influence of women in outdoor sports, nor about the negative impact of climate change on Minnesota’s fisheries. Each and both of those topics seem much more worthy of column inches in the Strib instead of a screed like “Tradition, ritual — and Minnesotans — are losers in Governor's Fishing Opener fiasco” 

Fishing

By A.E. Stallings

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

Maybe he regretted he had brought her—

She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—

Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.

Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:

To cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails

And fishes shelter in the undergrowth.

And when the unseen strikes, how all else pales

Beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth,

Life and death weighed in the shining scales,

The invisible line pulled taut that links them both.

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