"Four Feet of Anything"

August 23, 2006 By: Marshall Cutchin

We all know that when the fishing is red hot, the weather is tolerable, and we are not freezing cold or dripping buckets of sweat from our boat shoes that fly fishing gear rarely matters. When I first realized this a couple of decades ago I came up with “Four feet of anything” as a catch-all phrase meaning that what you choose for gear is sometimes irrelevant, or at most a matter of personal taste.
But let’s just say, as an approximation, that 99% percent of the time something — or several things — prevent every fishing outing from turning into a life-changing experience. For that, I sometimes think, God made fly fishing gear. (I think another part of the divine reasoning might have to do with the fact that trout bums and saltwater slide-bys needed at least ersatz avocations.)
So for the next several days MidCurrent will be in Denver attending the annual Fly Fishing Retailer show and poring over all the new products manufacturers hope will appear on your local fly shop’s shelves in the coming year. We’ll be posting “live” during the show, so be sure to check the MidCurrent news regularly for anything we think deserves mention. Heck, I might even find four feet of something that will make me a better caster.