Fly fishing's supposed to be fun, but fly fishermen do tend to weigh it down with a lot of gear, money and expectations (not to mention words).

And frankly, the industry's not wholly without blame. Sweeping ad campaigns clutter the magazines and Intertubes, and in a surprising number, grim, unsmiling fly fishermen fish as though there's an IRS auditor waiting for them on the bank.

Stare directly into the marketing light too long, and you start to wonder why anybody would take up the sport.

Which is why it's nice to see somebody in the industry apparently enjoying themselves, though the source this time will come as a surprise to most of us.

Orvis.

(Yep. Me too.)



I don't know if I necessarily expected everyone at Orvis Central to be drinking brandy from snifters and wearing smoking jackets, but I wasn't expecting self-deprecating humor.

I've heard it said dying is easy, it's comedy that's hard, so falling on your face in a massively unfunny video is a risk.

That hasn't happened here, and the appearance of even a tiny bit of humor in this industry makes me hope somebody pulls their head out of their waders and hires potential comic genius filmmaker Steve Apple to produce a series of funny fly fishing/product videos.

They'd entertain, they'd inform, they'd go viral, and they'd lift the Cone of Darkness that sometimes seems to obscure the real fun of the sport.

(Note to fly fishing advertisers: if you don't believe "fun" works, I challenge you to watch this short video by marketing juggernaut Nike, who produced what amounts to an amateur video that went totally batshit viral)



The rest of us are having fun on the river. Why aren't fly fishing's advertisers?

See you having fun, Tom Chandler.