Kauffman’s Goes Bankrupt and Why Fly Fishing Is Like The Porn Industry
Well as you probably know fly anglers this is going to be a rather terse and intense essay on latest in the fly fishing world. As many of you have heard Kauffmans Stream Born Fly Shop is done. At least that’s what it appears because it has gone bankrupt. It’s one of the oldest names probably still around from the fly fishing industry when I was a young. They’re pretty cool to work with. One time I was heading out West and they actually sent a package of wading shoes I needed to the lodge where I would be staying. We were driving out West, and when I got there the shoes were waiting for me. So they were a real fly fishing shop.
The reason that Kauffmans when under is because of the many problems in the fly fishing world. The fly fishing industry is like the porn industry. You may laugh when I say that but the comparisons are absolutely statistically correct. The porn industry has taken a real dive. The reason for this is because there are so many porn sites giving away everything free, that one cannot distinguish between good porn and bad porn. Whatever that is? The same is true for fly fishing. In fact, it is truer for fly fishing than it is for porn because fly fishing is a small niche industry. You would never know that however, from the millions and millions of fly fishing sites. Part of the reason for this is because like our country we do not discern things very well as a populace.
The porn industry is actually a big industry monetarily. The fly fishing industry appears to be a big industry monetarily, but anyone who has been in its in any way shape or form, will tell you the exact opposite. There is very little money to go around in the fly fishing industry. The industry has been diluted by massive foreign imports of equipment and flies. The industry has been diluted by the millions of websites which are nothing more than hobbyists or people who think they’re going to make it big in the fly fishing industry and they are all experts! The industry is dying believe it or not. Our streams are dying. Yet people are still trying to hype streams that are not very good and fishing that is less than optimal, to say the least. I know this from personal experience with the famed limestone streams that I have studied and fished.
Every day I read another article or stream report about the streams and to put it bluntly it’s a fucking lie. I’ll give you a quick example. The trico hatch on the famed Falling Spring Run is an example of one of the great “porn lies” of all time. There hasn’t been a good trike a hatch on the stream in over 20 years. I should know since I did my dissertation on that stream. But you will go to tons of websites and they will tell you the flies are all over the place. If they see 5 or 10 flies they think it’s a hatch. There used to be so many trico mayflies that they looked like clouds of smoke on the stream. Tom Baltz who I consider a very good fishing guide always thought that Falling Spring in its heyday was probably the best little trout stream in the United States. It’s hard to disagree with that when one examines the hatches, the duration of the hatches, and the size of the rising trout.
Each month I get hundreds and hundreds of questions on my websites. I try and answer as many accurately as possible. The reason I get all the questions is I’m the one of the few websites that gives people real information. I’ve even had other websites steal my stuff including banners, information, and even articles. This is the same thing that happens in the porn industry. But all that free info doesn’t make anyone any money in the fly fishing world. It’s one of the reasons the other sites just try and sell you “there everything is wonderful package.”
It is very hard to monetize a fly fishing site to make it profitable. If you haven’t taken a look at the fly fishing magazines lately including Fly Fisherman notice how small they’ve become. They are a shadow of what they once were. The industry is hemorrhaging from influx of bad material and bad information. The fly fisherman who uses it has a hard time finding out what is true and not true.
Yes fly fishing tackle is definitely cheaper and better for the money in most instances with a few exceptions. However, the overwhelming amount of noise in the data of fly fishing information is making the information from the best sites hard to find and separate to people who don’t understand the art and science of what they’re about to get into. This is the same thing that’s happening in the porn industry. Except the porn industry actually is a big industry and fly fishing is basically a niche market. In the future many of my sites will be going to pay sections for videos and top not instruction. . Why? Because there has to be a difference between what you get for free in what is really worth something. It’s also time to stop many of these sites from stealing stuff and re-posting stuff that’s not theirs. I can no longer give away everything and I spend hours each month sending people fly patterns, places to fish, and other valuable stuff. I give out so much free info that other guides and site refuse to do. Often times these same people use these other sites or by products and find them to be hogwash and waste of their money and time. Well it’s a bit too late to complain afterwards.
Too many fly fishermen want everything for free. That’s one of the problems that has destroyed the web of fly fishing and the magazine culture. Many fly shops have closed and many more will. The markup on fly fishing equipment is so low that if you sold it at retail you would have a hard time making it. A fly rod that sells for hundred dollars has a wholesale price of $60. Now take 10% for shipping and your down to 30% markup. Add your overhead which the average fly shop has, is about 24% and you come up with a prophet of about 6%. And that doesn’t even include miscellaneous expenses. You must sell a hell of a lot of fly rods in order to make any money. That is not going to happen because there are so many people selling the same thing that you are. And contrary to what most fly anglers think, fly fishing is a really small niche industry! If you are a brick-and-mortar store you have a higher overhead than just a website. Look at what is happening to the fly industry! You can buy decent flies for under $10 a dozen on the net, a profit item that is basically not a money maker for a fly shop anymore. Why? Because the fly shop has to basically come close to the price that they are selling for online.
So in the future the fly fishing model will change. You will get what you pay for. So if you pay for nothing you will get garbage, and for many fly anglers that will be okay. However, for others who want good honest information, and proper instruction and guiding than it will be worth it to that small crowd to get something worth paying for. That’s the only way fly fishing will survive as an industry. And those that don’t like it well, like the free porn or the art of the erotic photography you’ll have to decide or distinguish what is worth paying for!
Fly Fishermen And Voting: Many of You Have Destroyed Your Own Streams
Hello fly anglers this is Gene Macri aquatic and environmental scientist. You may not wish to read all this if you are easily offended by politics and profanity. But I am sick and tired of so many fly fishermen complaining about the destruction of their waters and then voting like idiots. In case you don’t know it, the state of Pennsylvania is in serious environmental jeopardy. Fracturing as it is called will threaten the water supplies, streams, rivers, hunting land, and farming land throughout the state. Fracturing is one of the most destructive forms of mining ever invented contrary to what the mining companies say.
This was made more serious by the fact that Bush and Cheney gave mining companies an exemption on the Clean Water and Air Act. Cheney met secretly with the oil companies and energy insiders and plotted this out. The state of Pennsylvania is the most polluted state in the nation. It is number one in water pollution, and is in the top 10 of every other type of major pollution. For the most part DEP is incapable of protecting the environment and the citizens of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is just as bad. Now the latest governor, Tom Corbett has decided to remove the permitting review process in state forests and game lands.
The Republicans like Corbett, are basically scientifically illiterate and are against the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. Their insanity over regulation has now reached the point where they threaten the livelihood and safety of the citizens of the states they govern. All of these governors have received contributions from these mining companies.
Yet fly fisherman continue to vote for these idiots. Trout streams do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in the political realities of the time. I’ve heard so much stupidity since Obama was elected. He’s a Marxists; he’s a socialist. He’s not much different than George Bush. He’s a Corporate Lackey and is basically afraid to deal with the corporations and industry. He tried but one thing differently than Bush, and that was an attempt at an effective health care for America. Most of the people who shout he’s a Marxists; he’s a socialist; he’s this, he’s that don’t know their ass from a hole the ground. They know nothing about the country they live in or the Constitution that governs it. They are semi-literate and scientifically illiterate. They think they know what capitalism is. They fail to realize that we live in a a corporate fascist military industrial police state. They think this is democracy. They think this is what capitalism is. They have never read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Instead they listen to the likes of Fox news and other wing nut disinformation sites and that’s how they make their opinions on what’s going on in America.
Our streams are in peril and if you think these crazed right-wing extremists like Corbett give a fuck about your trout streams– think again. Fishing, hunting and tourism related activities are second largest industry in the state of Pennsylvania. In fact, when you actually study the layers and layers of people these industries support they push agriculture in the state for number 1. When they talk of jobs they talk of only the jobs for their corporate friends. The jobs of the fishing and hunting and tourism industry of Pennsylvania mean nothing to them.
If you think your fly fishing streams will be able to withstand this assault then think again. I know they’re going to take your guns.! They aren’t taking your guns. This is just a ruse to scare you. Instead they’re going to take your trout streams, the health of your children, your clean-air, clean water, and your livelihood. We have met the enemy and he is us as. I have had enough of this fucking bull shit and complaining about the destruction of your streams when you have engineered such destruction by your voting methods.
America is in a state of insanity that will doom your fishing and hunting. Your children and grandchildren will wake up to environment that can only be described as hell on earth for what many of you have done.
Fly Fishing Instruction and Guiding Getting Suckered
I do a limited amount of fly fishing instruction and guiding. This year has been strange. I’ve had a number of people cancel out. Obviously some of this is due to the economic conditions and the hot weather we’ve have had in June and July. But the other cancellations kind of puzzled me because my prices are right in the middle of the pack and you get not only a professional fly angler but an aquatic scientist too. Well, I emailed a bunch of these people and found out they ended up going to one of these so called fly fishing schools. Well guess what– they all got ripped off! Yes, they all told me the same thing that they didn’t learn hardly anything. It was a total waste of time and were sorry they didn’t hire me. Many promised to book next year or in the fall.
Of course, I am kind of polite in these situations and told them I’m sorry that they got ripped off and that they will learn much much more with individual instruction than you could in a Cow Herd fly fishing school. I have taught at fly fishing schools including Masters of Fly Fishing with my friend Lefty Kreh. This is an expensive school but you have as more instructors than students. But this school is the exception. When these people left this school after 3 days they were well versed in the fundamentals of fly fishing. You need precise individual attention to learn fly fishing and that seldom happens at these types of events.
Most of these schools unfortunately will be a waste of time but people get suckered by some fancy ads of some equipment name and end up wasting their time and money. I’ve watched this trend in fly fishing for the last number of years and it really damages any attempt of people to learn the fundamentals. Because of this many people will never succeed long term in fly fishing because the bad habits which they develop with such programs become ingrained and they can never extinguish them. I instructed a fellow on Big Spring a while back who had been fly fishing for over 20 years. However, he lacked any accuracy in casting and I spent most of the day teaching him the fundamentals of ninja style short casting on a spring creek.
Another fellow called me up and wanted to book a day on one of the spring creeks. I guess I was $25.00 more than the competition. The guy kept emailing me more and more questions and I answered them as I do for everyone. After a while I realized he had been fishing one of the spring creeks. I asked him and he told me he hired a guide and he didn’t learn anything. I kindly told him to call the guide he had hired if he wanted any more info. I guess it takes all kinds!
Buyer beware…you get what you pay for and fly fishing instruction is no exception.
tight lines,
gene macri
Fly Fishing’s Decline
Well I’ve been preaching about this for a number of years now and it’s finally taking shape and it will get worse. Fly fishing is in decline. It’s in decline on the Web and it’s in decline in the stores with many name brand and smaller shops going under. Part of this is because the internet allows people to sell stuff without a brick and mortar store with lower overhead which destroys many shops. The actually number of websites has increased dramatically but the number of visitors and searches has dropped dramatically which means you have a kind of “fly fishing inflation.”
This will get worst. Anyone can put up a website and advertise themselves as an expert. Many of the people who are entering fly fishing are extremely limited in their understanding of what it’s actually about and get taken for a ride. There are more con artists in fly fishing now than ever before. The sad thing is that the internet was both the boom and failure of fly fishing.
We have less good water than we did 20 years ago and it’s getting worse contrary to what anyone tells you. I should know! I work on some of the best trout streams in the world and yet they are just a shadow of what they once were. But you won’t read this on most websites who constantly preach what was true 50 years ago but is not true now. It’s a con game that’s getting worse. I knew this day would come because the social, economic, and environmental impacts have take their toll on most of our streams and most fly fishermen don’t seem to care. Don’t tell me that TU or the Federation of Fly Fishers is saving waters because I work with some of these groups and they are extremely limited in what they do and what they can do. Furthermore, many of their projects are actually hurting streams rather than helping them because they are using the wrong methods. But that’s another story entirely.
The fly fishing establishment will either wake up and do something or they will allow our streams and rivers to perish. I suggest you read my essay on the Susquehanna River and how it is dying.
tight lines,
gene macri
Welcome to Macri’s Fly Fishing Blog
Welcome to Gene Macri’s Fly Fishing Blog. It’s part of the our fly fishing and environmental group of websites. I hope you enjoy it. It will contain post and pages about breaking items in the fly fishing world that affect our fly fishermen and their waters. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Tight lines,
Gene Macri
Aquatic and Environmental Scientist and Fly Fisherman
