National News & Information >April 2008 Features

The idle thoughts of an idle editor by Jerry Flay

Armchair fishing

Living in the isolation that is part of the deal of Waiheke, I sometimes feel very remote from trout fishing. It must be the only part of NZ that does not have access to excellent water within 30 minutes drive. We also have a bum golf course, so that’s both my hobbies stuffed, but I digress.

When you love fishing, you just want to fish - most, if not all of the time. If your only option is a trip over to the mainland, and you are manacled to your desk by work, and to your home by wife and children, then opportunities come few and far between. There are only so many excuses you can invent for being away before that awful seed of suspicion takes hold and you find yourself carpeted, and probably banned for a period.

So it is lucky I have the internet. If you are reading this, so do you, as my writing has yet to find its way into more conventional media (although doubtless that will come one day, probably just when everyone has switched to online).

The internet is a great invention, Whether it is good, only the next generation will know, but in what it can do, it is great. For me, it provides  a chance to fish vicariously – by reading some of the growing number of fishing reports published around the country.

Every day I check out what’s going on in Turangi, and recently I was able to keep up with the World Flyfishing Championships to the point I felt like a spectator. And it made me think.

Whenever I go to the mainland (Auckland), I allow enough time to pop into my local fishing shop and just browse a while, running my hands lovingly over new tackle and taking in the atmosphere. But now it has shut. Rising costs etc, no doubt, and probably competition from online retailers. That’s a tough one – our generation still like to visit a shop, but tomorrows anglers? Will all their purchases be online? Probably.

You see, it is so easy to sit in the comfort of one’s own home, sneak a backward glance over one’s shoulder to check the wife is absorbed in Coronation St and then sneak online and purchase a complete set of brand new Sage rods. It’s not even real money, just a credit card. You know they are good, you have read all the reviews etc online, so you do not need to see them or anything. And a week later they arrive.

True, there is the issue of the enormous credit card bill that you failed to intercept, and the fact that she is unlikely to believe your plea of “but I have no idea why they sent them to me, maybe it’s a delivery mistake”, but that is easy to get around – you just get a new, secret card, and have the next batch sent to a mate’s house.

It’s a slippery slope, admittedly.

But where will it end? I have a dream called virtual World Flyfishing Champs. It’s  an online game, and because there are no limits, everyone can enter. Hopefully some nerd in a dark cave somewhere will invent it. Imagine, being able to study the conditions of the river as it runs past you on your screen, choose your flies, manipulate your mouse to achieve the perfect cast and then fight a silver bullet using your up and down cursor, knowing that 73 experts from Albania and all points east are also playing the same fish at the same time.

It goes on. You could fish rivers all over the world, from the comfort of your own home, using different virtual rods, reels etc. You could select your own conditions, time of year and even stock waters with fish of specific weights. The opportunities are endless.

And it would certainly solve the problem of living on Waiheke!

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