When preparing for a fishing trip, the feed bag has to go on the prairie ponies and pony feed continues to go up. Yesterday afternoon, pony feed was $3.04 for a gallon bucket and predicted to go up. The rising cost of petrol may very well have an overall effect on fly fishing in general. With increased costs associated in just "getting there", some of us less affluent anglers may have to curtail our activities.
Being a fly fisher, that is barely keeping his neck above that drowning line and sinking into the depths of the classification of "welfare-class angler", the price of petrol does alter the destiny I know is mine to own. To fly fish is the path I was born to travel and why the oil barons, giants, and market manipulators have chosen to target me and thousands of other similar-fate fly anglers is beyond any common sense reasoning.
The rising cost of petrol doesn't only effect us at the pump. A perfect example is at the grocery store checkout lane. All that wonderful produce that is grown in the San Joaquin Valley doesn't suddenly appear on display at your local grocery store. Transporting food from the field to the packer/shipper to the distribution center to the wholesaler to the retailer adds up rather quickly. The higher petrol... the higher the cost of food.
Most likely, you and several ten-million other people weren't thinking about petrol while smearing the toothpaste on the toothbrush this morning. But... as you, and the other ten-million or so brushed up and down, back and forth, oil royalty owners everywhere were smiling like the Cheshire Cat, because toothpaste is one of the many products that contains petroleum.
I'd almost bet good money, if I had any, that the price of petrol has an immediate correlation with the number of fly fishing trips anglers make during any given year. You can probably graph it out.
Of course there are great and grand plans for the future... to free us of the can't-live-without pacifier known as oil We have become addicted to oil as any poor soul that made the mistake of smoking crack at some point in his or her life. However, the grand future plans to free us of our dependency doesn't solve the immediate problem which is getting to the water without having to eventually file bankruptcy.
The sad part is this. The only way America is going to avoid higher petrol prices... is for all of us to drive less.
For a fly fishing addict... this may be a painful thing to do. Painful indeed, but a selfless thing at the same time... as the price of petrol puts the pinch on piscatorial pursuit.
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