Orvis: Fly fishing on a budget?

I got an Orvis advertisement email that was captioned "Fly fishing on a budget?"

Oh, bar har har har!

Why yes, I am.

I really have to laugh at this.  I love Orvis' stuff, although its price deters me from buying it as a rule, but I was fly fishing way before fly fishing was cool, and for the original reason. . . to catch fish. . .which I eat.

Yes, gasp!  I view fishing the way the Indians did, heck the way stoneage man did, and the way generations of fishermen did before the gentrification and wussyification of things caused the PC fishing to be "catch and release".  Oh, I'll release, but only if the fish is too small to eat or below the legal size limit.  Otherwise, I'm eating the fish. Which is, no matter what a person might wish to fool themselves about, the point of fishing.

Now, I have nothing against the nice gear that Orvis offers, but not only am I fishing for primitive reasons (which is actually the reason that anyone fishes, no matter what they tell themselves) but I'm so low rent, that I look my primitive part.  I don't even own waders.  Not because I'm opposed to waders, but rather because as a short man who was a short boy I never was able to own a pair in a size that looked like it would fit, and now I'm acclimated to simply wading in while wearing old Army tropical combat boots.

Indeed, when I'm found on the trout streams (which isn't nearly enough), I'm typically found wearing blue jeans, a work shirt, a M1911 campaign hat (that doubles as my hunting hat) and my tropical combat boots.  Last year we updgraded to new fly poles and retired the really old ones that we were still using, which had been my fathers (and one of which is still pretty nice), but we didn't go high dollar by any means. Still, the new poles are really nice.

It's funny, however, how we'll actually get some odd looks from the fisherman on the Platte who are clearly higher rent than we are.  Indeed now people charter fishing guides and even fly in to fish here.  I guess seeing the rude primitives on the Platte sort of unsettles them and they don't like it.  Nonetheless, I suspect we're closer to the original and remaining core of the sport, and perhaps they should, in looking at us, look back in time, and back into the reason that people do this.