Frank had been telling his story for twenty minutes. All I could think about was whether or not he could land the plane. He’d already taken me on three pointless side quests—talking about other people’s fish, other countries’ fisheries, at one point he’d talked about Australian trevally. All I’d asked about was surf perch on the Oregon coast. Frank tells stories like that, though. Damn near frothing at the mouth while steam rolling his listeners with pointless information until he and everyone else have long since lost the point and now watch as he’s just talking in hopes of getting somewhere with whatever he’s got left.

Near as I could tell, surf perch had sent Frank tracing the currents of trophy salt water fishing and lodges and Caribbean and Mexican and Hawaiian destinations. Seems travel fishing had been on his mind of late. Bone fish in Belize. Permit and snook in the Keys. Trevally in Fiji. Tarpon in Mexico. Marlin. He wanted to go everywhere. He wanted to do everything. After all, these places are everywhere now. Well, they’re everywhere sizzle reels and glossy flash addicts go to get their fishing fix which really means YouTube, social media, and fly fishing industry rags. Frank had forgotten to either plug his ears or lash himself to the mast. He was headed for the rocks and showing no signs of changing course.

I don’t know if exotic travel has always been this central to fly fishing, but it forms one profitable division of the industry now. It seems to me that, in the last five or so years the powers that be have gone deep on the marketing end for destination lodges. While those of us with skin in the game hear from reps that, “The local fly shop is the heart of what we do,” the big names—and the smaller names trying to get big—have all but abandoned the idea of home water for elsewhere water. It’s tropical or bust. It’s a marketplace of envy. It’s kinda thirsty and a little too unquestioned for my tastes. But, isn’t that how good marketing works? Need manufactured out of nothing and no one asks why.

In one sense, the union of travel and fly fishing works. Like golf and golfers, people get tired of their home courses. Fishing new water freshens an old feel. The fish and waters differ. The locals have accents. Each cast could land a whole new species. Lunch and dinner and breakfast are different, too. The thrill of the variety always gives rise to something. Throw into that mix that most Americans need a reason to travel—god forbid we go somewhere just to be somewhere different—and travel to fish tracks.

Destination fishing is made for anglers like Frank. First off, the guy doesn’t really fish that much anyhow. He lives within two hours drive time from several epic rivers which is to say nothing of the coast or streams or lakes or blue lines in that same radius and he probably gets out twice, maybe four times a year. Travel fishing does a few things for him. It lets Frank live in a fantasy world—one where he both fishes and fishes with much greater success than he deserves. The mystique of travel coupled with seeming exotic species (though a rainbow trout is pretty exotic to someone from Guam) enables him to feel like a rarefied angler.

“You fish for bluegill on a chartreuse popper after work to unwind? You should go for tarpon in Cancun! It’ll change your life.”

Even if Frank never actually goes, the dream of travel feels like he’s doing something, touching some kind of celebrity in accord with the sizzle and flash that floods his better judgement. In other words, he gets to feel like he’s part of the scene, a member of the elite in a world of foolish rankings where rankings don’t matter except for those desperate enough to think they do. Packaging gets him every time. I suppose that puts him wholly within the bellcurve of salesmen everywhere. At least he has plenty of company.

But there’s another sense to this whole exotic fly fishing travel thing. Seems to me the error of this marketing and glossy commodification is that it goes against the simple pleasures of the hobby itself. In elevating the elsewhere, the local gets left behind. Or worse, the salability of exotic fly travel makes fly fishing just another colonizing industry which of course has a long history amongst trophy hunters but history as legacy doesn’t make that urge any less pathetic. Hear me out.

I am not arguing that travel is bad. I am not arguing that outdoor enthusiasts—fly fishermen in particular—are colonizers on the level with Dole, lithium mines, big oil, and the Amazon burning cattle industry. I see the positives in travel. I’ve traveled more than most. Going to a denuded rainforest or witnessing the scars of Elon’s mines or seeing derelict oil derricks for yourself stands a better shot at changing your mind on conservation and environmental protection than some PBS special. Here in the PNW, taking a hike through an old growth coast rain forest, fishing for steelhead or salmon along those rivers, feeling the sanctity of that world to only drive back through a nuclear clearcut with silted up tributaries on your way home will make an activist—or at least a more fully aware person—out of damn-near anyone.

However, and this is a big however, the rhetoric and the rhetorical situation around most fly fishing travel these days has little or nothing to do with the virtues of travel. The selling point hinges on luxury trophy hunting with moneyed elitism thrown in for good measure. It’s the new African safari, the new lion hunt, the new elephant hunt. All those trophy photos posted are merely digital versions of a zebra skin rug. Yeah bwana, I said it. These trips are an exploitative, extractive kind of escapism couched in a simulacrum of authenticity with the goal of selling an experience—a highly curated experience, I might add—along with a few rods, reels, and lines thrown in for good measure. Moreover, the design of said experiences, the behind the scenes work done by lodge owners and guides and booking agencies and the kid you paid $20 American for beer delivered by bike at the beach while you recount your exploits over the sunset feeling like a master of the universe, aims to cover over the darker sides of what locals are actually living through as you come to fish their waters while your own have gone to pot. Sure, the locals are more than happy to get your money. They need it. But let’s not forget the cross of iron that backs the value of that twenty dollars also threatens inundation of their islands with melting ice and rising seas. That’s one hell of a price for a bonefish.

I believe one of the greatest virtues of fly fishing is that it helps us belong to place. The best of us not only pay attention to weather, seasons, flows, runs, and hatches. They also pay attention to political situations, conservation efforts, natural resources management. They take part in river clean-ups. They keep an eye on prospectors, developers, legislators, commissioners, and all other genres of assholes willing to bring more ruination for the cost of a few dollars.

Sure, a day spent fishing should have an element of retreat, of escapism. That’s kind of the point sometimes. Yet, the days of being unaware or unconcerned with home water issues are long gone. We now know fisheries are both delicate and resilient. They have limits and our species tests those limits with reckless abandon. The easy sale of exotic fly travel does a better job of getting us to forget local issues than it does in making planetary conservationists out of its marks. Of course it does.

When Frank wrapped up his ramble, he landed by summarizing the needed features of a good flats line. Seems he was headed to Indonesia on a business retreat, something to do with expanding global sales operations in the South East Asian markets. Local backers and his corporate office were meeting face-to-face because Microsoft Teams just wouldn’t cut it. He had already booked two days of fishing because why not, they’re paying.

I sold him the line. It was one I knew our other regulars liked and had found success with in similar waters. Frank seemed happy. When I asked him if he’d been out lately he said no.

“There’re no fish here!”

I smiled, wishing him safe travels and meaning it.