Saturday, June 27, 2009

I have a drawer full of rejection letters and....

You guys have to check this out a couple older gentlemen are making a dream trip from South to North across our country. It's s great idea, and I love the notion of two guys in their later years taking on a trip of this nature. I'm not much for bashing people publicly so, just going to make a few comments based from info in Gary's articles posted on ESPN following their trip.

"Unless you want to catch an Apache to add it to you bucket list I say skip them. They fight small, mostly because they're small."

Here you go Gary, this shot's for you. Maybe next time you seek Apache trout, you should rely on info gathered from places other than a coffee shop in Springerville, that happens to sell tippet and flies, before you venture out to fish and write on places you've never been before.


Next they headed to Gila Country. The Author got blanked. Going on to say the following, "Gila trout are small fish in small streams and extremely tough to catch."
Gary I would like you to meet Hudson, he was two at the time of this picture.


So I only made it about half way through their third stop, when they started attributing their success to temp checks on the San Juan, a tail water which remains a constant 42 F. The title of this installment was, "Dumbest Fish in America."

While I sincerely love their idea and the trip across our country searching out trouts in their home waters, I have to ask WTF is the best sport reporting organization on the planet doing? Obviously someone has lost the lock to the drawer full of pens.


Whole series can be read here: http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/fishing/news/story?id=4263466

4 comments:

Cutthroat Stalker (Scott C) said...

Aaron,

As they say, it's who you know. I'm sure these guys didn't get the job simply from their skills. Sorry to hear about the rejection letters--I like your stuff ;-)

I was a little disappointed in the posts too. (By the way, you'd think some editor at ESPN was checking the copy before posting. Sheesh!) If they did some research before trying for the Apaches and Gilas you think they would have had a better experience or just skipped it because it's not their thing. This quote from the Gila trip killed me: "Ed and I have had enough of this. Small fish, few and far between. Spit across stream." Like I said, if they researched they would've known the situation and could have prepared or skipped.

-scott c

Aaron said...

SC, you hit it on the head. What kills me in context of all three reports is that they go around bashing the SW and her fisheries for small and fightless fish, then get to the SJ and bash big fish for being dumb.

You got a guy from the bread basket and a New Yorker writing on trout fishing in the West. Combine that with no editorial stop-gates and you get what we're reading. The suprising part for me is the lack of control ESPN has on the print.

I apprecaite the thoughts, I wish you, my mom, and a couple other friends weren't the only ones that liked it. So it-is.

Aztec Anglers said...

Wow, the arrogance just oozes from every pore from this guy. Sad really! I agree, small apaches don't fight all that great, but once they hit about 13-14", that is a different story. As far as his san juan opinion, he picked the only time of the year where the fish are big and dumb, right after the spring flows come back to normal, they have not been fished much for 4-8 weeks and they are on the feed. He should try to come back in mid-August, he would change his tune bigtime. Fish a place one time and become an expert eh? Well, we know better don't we?

Aaron said...

No joke Paulito. Have to admit though, a bit jealous. These guys taste the lifestyle for a couple weeks, and ESPN picks them up? Maybe that's the ticket for me? I should only spend a couple weeks fishing per year and not a hundred or so days on the water? Maybe then when I go fish places editors will pick up the pieces?? LOL who knows, sorry to be so narcasistic. Just that, all the recent frustrations of having things pulled, makes this type of publicaiton a very soft spot for me.

Don't take it personally, about them knocking the Juan and its fish. They did take out their themometer, remember? LOL.