I am embarrassed to say this, but I am worn out and quite excited about having made a mistake on the calendar which has resulted in me not being on the river tomorrow. Yes, the Yellowstone River below HWY 89 is opened once again to angling a recreational use. No, I do not wish I was there tomorrow. I wish that I was in a dark hotel room with the AC at 48 for 2-3 days. Actually, weather is coming in right now and things are looking on the up and up from here on out.
Fished the Lower Madison today in a 25-35 downhill breeze. Boat fishing was pretty sloppy, but posting up next to the buckets was very solid. The wind was a challenge, but a short leader with a wire worm and a couple AB's was all we needed to make it happen. The weeds weren't as bad as I had expected and the crayfish bite sucked. But the red metal bite was good enough, maybe even a little better.
Saw a Prairie Falcon miss a Merganser by a few inches at 85 MPH and whack itself on the water rather than the duck. The Merganser had no idea what happened and it took me a few seconds to process the rocket booking sound and smack of the water. Both birds were fine it appeared. Ominous start to the day.
No unicorns today, but I did wonder if maybe I should just keep the Simms saga to myself….nah, I've done that long enough.
It started a few years ago when the rep and I sat down and just had a chat about things. We talked about our businesses, philosophies, and the current state of affairs in the marketplace. I had always thought that it was strange how Simms had consistently blown us off over the years and never talked to us about becoming a dealer when they moved to 4-Corners. I didn't take it personal, just thought it was odd. They pretty much put the nail in the coffin of GYF (it was honestly pretty much there already though) by opening up a new dealer in 4-Corners…the Rivers Edge West. The result of this however, was that they inadvertently created a surprisingly large and boisterous crowd of local and traveling anglers that were turned off by the "corporate" appearance of REW along with the demise of GYF following the new RE shop.
Personally, I have and had enough going on that I didn't spend too much time thinking about it, but it became bothersome as we would hear about this from customers more days than not. I'm not a fan of "fly shop gossip" and we did our best to diffuse the tension with folks in the shop.
So, we talked about this and the idea that there really isn't any room for negativity and drama in the fly fishing business world. Customers should be coming in to the shop to get some stuff, learns some things, and to have more fun on the water through their experience with us. The idea that this is a community and that I want to support the members of my community (i.e.-the folks that work at Simms) as they have supported me (by shopping at our store from time to time) really started me down the path of trying to figure out a way that we cold "all work together."
I was tired of hearing people tell me that I don't like Simms because we don't carry it. Most people have no idea how this distribution model works and don't realize that we don't necessarily have a say in what brands we are allowed to carry (the manufacturers and sales reps make up the distribution models) Things were changing though, and it seemed like this would be as good a time as ever for all of us to support one another and we finally had a plan.
More to come later
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