Get Out Yer Dance Cards! It’s the Monday Morning Sidewalk Dance
Can you believe? It’s still January and it seems to be lasting a very, very long time. But it is winding down to this the last week of the first month of the New Year. Welcome to the Texas original: Monday Morning Sidewalk!
This week will be a revealing one for the news gathering here at Texas Fly Caster. If the dominoes fall as they are setup? You will certainly be blown away by the sound they make in the State’s fly fishing retail scene. News Scoops, for lack of a better term, sometimes have a lid on them while the news takes time to mature, to finalize itself. In these past few months, and days in another case; it has been difficult NOT to pop the top and let the fizz out. Soon my fly fishers, soon.
THE SECOND COMING GEN-COVID
Now that we are looking clearly at the end of the most extraordinary economic and social era in my adult life, what can we all do but try to make sense of it, find silver linings and hurry forward into the light of post-COVID fly fishing and toward the new order of fly fishing. I could concentrate on the bigger post-COVID picture, but it is just too mind boggling.
The COVID era is the Second Coming of Fly Fishing in the United States of America. That is my theme, and is a huge topic that casts a cloud over the post-COVID era soon to come. Many people have found many things other than fly fishing, but we have to admit; COVID floated a lot of boats. Outdoors, and outdoor activities have all benefited from COVID. The tiny percentage of the outdoor economy that is occupied by fly fishing is no different. In fact, it is such a small percentage, that we feel the economic changes in more intimate, and magnified ways than other huge outdoor economies like the conventional fishing market.
Flat out: It has been the best of times, once you extract the exotic fly fishing travel market.
Now with the COVID cloud shadow about to move off into the past, what happens to the fly fishing economy? Our boat that has been floated along with all the rest? Could we find ourselves with a new great contraction? Could it be that when the sun finally shines, it goes even more crazy? Have no doubt; the outdoors is COVID safer than the indoors. I am a witness to that fact-based-true-news statement.
But, the big but, we have a huge integrated economy, and those of us who study or even actually studied economics – macro and micro – are mystified and continue to worry. Politics, warfare, supply-chain, overstimulation and contraction … these ALL have the potential INDIVIDUALLY to deal body blows to the fly fishing economy.
But, the little but, let’s look at the less heavy side of the Second Coming.
Just as the First Coming, aka. A River Runs Through It, era had both staying power and a faddish faction, we should expect that for the COVID era as well. I don’t know how many people I have met who trace their fly fishing births to that movie, but there are still plenty who cross my path every single year. But a lot of used fly fishing gear came from the First Coming as well. And if you want to talk inflation? tell me about before and after A River, and what you experienced! There is NO doubt there will be a “falling away” because there always is after one of these shocks to the system. Something else comes along; no more work from home, no more stimulus (note all the new Toyota 4Runners running around?) or some other factor will peel off those who don’t burn for fly fishing.
TEXAS IS UNIQUE
One thing about fly fishing in Texas is: Our population is growing by a million citizens a year. How many non-citizens we will never know. That means Texas is now becoming like California, but not in the way you think. We are becoming what Californians used to call (when I lived there) “recession proof.” As we head to becoming the number one most populous State in the USA, there are just more people – here, there and everywhere. Among those people are more fly fishers – it’s just a numerical fact. (So is the water pressure that goes with this growth.) By the way; California was not then, nor is it now “recession proof.” I was a personal witness to that fallacy.
CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM
Let us go forward into the New Year, the new Post-COVID year with cautious optimism for the fly fishing lives we lead – on the Down Low or out in the bright light. Personally, in all these years, I have NEVER EVER had so many fine GEN-COVID fly fishers contact me. They are addicted like none I have ever seen before. They wrap their lives around fly fishing to an amazing (their parents say “alarming”) degree, and they are the new seekers, the newly addicted. I love them. Their texts and calls are almost always a brain exercise for me! If only I could get them to check the fifteen-year archives here some times – the answers are baked into this website.
The cautious side; there are plenty of new “posers” as well, and the female side of the fly fishing GEN-COVID is loaded, I mean LOADED up with them. My observation is: These healthy young women, who have social media savvy, just needed that one ingredient to take their Instagram likes from 10 to 1000, and fly fishing did that for them – overnight. Clothing companies, across the board, have cashed in BIG TIME. And they have coined their own fresh version of the “Fly Fishing Sports” to their great financial benefit in the COVID era. More power to them!
NOTES: This week should be loaded with new stories. Look for my article in the Lone Star Outdoor News – on how to get your fish weighing scale certified for submitting Texas records. There could be two new scoops related to fly fishing retail – stretched, end-to-end, through this week. There IS a new public introduction to my Patreon Fly Fishing Series – Basics of Fly Fishing <- click on that! The Patreon Series will have subscription videos, available nowhere else, uploaded to subscribers starting this week. I will be using Patreon to go “unplugged” and freewheeling, or wheels-off, going forward! A new video on the Certified Scale Story and Advanced Systems shows up on YouTube and the thawing out of the Texas Fly Fishing Reports videos continues. If that’s not enough? I am working on a new video about a revolutionary Shallow Water Pickup System for skiffs, and what they mean for skiffs and flats boats on the Texas Gulf Coast. NEWS FLASH: It Works!
REMINDER: Your subscription to Patreon Fly Fishing opens up all kinds of doors in your fly fishing brain! It has its own rewards, and it helps the adventures continue full speed ahead.
Category: Adventure, Body-Mind-Soul, Clothing, Culture on the Skids, Equipment, Flats Boats, Industry, Life Observed, Next Generation, Store Merchandise, Texas Skiff
