Twelve Fly Rods For a Post-Apocalyptic World

Twelve Fly Rods For a Post-Apocalyptic World

I fell asleep on the couch the other day, and dreamed myself into a post-apocalyptic world where the fly-rod police knocked on my door and told me I was only allowed to own 12 fly rods.

“But I’m the Fish Terminator, man,” I said, realizing I was also sipping a White Russian and wearing a bathrobe like The Dude in The Big Lebowski. (This is a dream, after all.) “How am I possibly going to catch trout, redfish, salmon, striped bass and everything else I’m supposed to catch (for reasons still unknown) with only 12 fly rods?”

“That’s your problem, and if you don’t pare down within a day, that thing you think is a giant booger stuck up your left nostril is actually an implanted device, like Arnold Schwarzenegger had in ‘Total Recall.’ We’ll set it off and melt your brain. Don’t bother with the wet towel. Thank you and have a nice day.”

“Fuck,” I thought, as I closed the door and scratched at my nose. “Only 12 fly rods? That’s inhumane!”

I mean, I had been brainwashed by the fly rod companies, like millions of others, into thinking that the average person needs way more than one or two fly rods to be a merely competent angler, let alone a Fish Terminator, whether you can actually afford them or not.

In this dream, I refreshed the White Russian and sauntered to my rod vault. Standing there, facing that shiny array of hard-earned aluminum caps, I wept for a moment, and then gathered myself and started the selection process…

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