fishing for words

“Fish have a distinct preference for water.”

~ Fish Sniffer magazine editor Dan Bacher

The pending release of the video game SEGA Bass Fishing got me to wondering why bass seems to be the most widely known — and not necessarily widely loved — of American fishes.

Here’s my list of possibilities.

• A trout fisherman is quiet. A bass fisherman is loud. The evidence is in three words: “largemouth bass fisherman.”

• A trout fisherman will creep up on and wade in a small stream. A bass fisherman will haul around a lake in a special-built 200-horsepower boat.

• A trout fisherman will cast soft hackle flies and let them drift with the current. A bass fisherman will hurl “poppers,” “chatterbaits,” and “crankbaits,” to name a few, into the water.

• A trout fisherman tries to fool trout into sipping flies. A bass fisherman looks for bass to “explode” on his lure.

• Trout is a bashful and graceful fish. Bass, well, are just plain mean looking.

…so, in the trout vs. bass battle, I’m afraid that bass will always win out when it comes to gaining the most attention.

Nothing like passion to fuel the use of one’s talents. While I tend not to be too gracious in accepting congratulations or compliments, it’s been very cool to see the reaction to a new Web site I put together for the Diablo Valley Fly Fishermen, a club I joined a year ago. My fly fishing remains far from polished but my skills in crafting HTML into something functional yet pleasant in appearance show promise.

Chalk it up to an innate characteristic to not leave well enough alone. Subscribing to the claim that the DVFF is one of the larger fly fishing clubs in the United States and that its presence on the Internet should reflect this, I jumped into a Web site redesign in November. The initial desire was to craft a prototype composed of a few pages. Roughly six weeks later a design - encompassing the whole site - had taken up home on my flash drive.

But again, I couldn’t leave well enough alone.  By the beginning of January a full revision of my revision of the original site was underway.

In a flash of genius insanity I also decided to add an online forum. As my father might say, it required a “big learning curve.” But I did it. And I think I did it well. Now, with the blessing of the club’s board, it’s ready to go.

Look for the new diablovalleyflyfish.org in a browser window near you.