Whatever happened to the Scotch?

Okay. So we're now in Missouri campground hosting at Montauk State Park. It's a lovely place. The park is situated at Montauk Springs, the headwaters of the Current River, and is in the Ozarks. The campground nestles next to the river and is nicely laid out with "mature" landscaping. Lots of humongous shade trees, relatively level ground, actual concrete pads on which campers can park their motorhomes or trailers. The campers run the gamut from young families with multiple small children muddling along in a humble pop-up or in tents to retirees with high dollar 5th wheel trailers or fresh off the assembly line Leviathans. There's a motorhome parked not far from us that I'd be willing to swear I saw on HGTV on a show dedicated to million dollar RVs, but there are also RVs that come close to being Randy Quaid specials. I guess our Guppy falls closer to the Randy Quaid end of the spectrum, but it's not alone in being an older model.

But, as usual, what I start off writing about isn't actually what's on my mind. What's actually on my mind is what's with all these trout fishermen who don't seem to have gotten the memo about the way trout fishermen are supposed to behave. I've read the Robert Traver books (Trout Madness, Trout Magic). Trout fishermen are solitary souls who stake out their piece of the river, focus obsessively on catching fish, and then go home (or back to their tent) to brood silently, thinking about the perfect fly and sipping Glenfiddich or some other single malt Scotch whiskey. They do not gather in herds around a campfire to consume massive amounts of Busch Lite (in cans, no less) and then fill the fire ring with the discarded cans of their horrible cheap beer.

Maybe I should assume it's all the guys (and gals) with their spin-casting rods. People who spin cast instead of fly fishing do tend to be a bit more casual in their outlook. At any rate, I don't see too many of them walking around looking like photos from an Orvis catalog. The fly fishermen get totally tricked out in waders and special vests and go stalking toward the river with their beautifully crafted wooden landing nets dangling on their backs; the spin casters amble casually by with a rod in one hand, a cheap landing net and small box of lures in the other, and maybe a pair of rubber boots on their feet. They're casting from shore; the fly fishermen are wading out into the middle of the river.

Of course, the fly fishermen have to get into the middle of the river in order to have space to whip all that line around. I took a fly fishing class in college -- I didn't learn much from it -- once the instructor got us to spread out along the banks of the Pilgrim River, I'd make sure I was as far away from him as possible, find a comfortable place to sit, and then read for an hour -- but I did figure out that fly fishing is a whole lot of work for not much fish. Spin casting, on the other hand, you can do from a lawn chair, which, in fact, is what a fair number of campers at this park do every day. There are several very nice areas set up for use by disabled fishermen, but if there's no one around who happens to be in an actual wheelchair and needs the space, anyone with a lawn chair can take advantage of the concrete piers.

In any case, from the perspective of a person who's getting to pick the beer cans out of the fire rings, it feels like there is something seriously wrong with the typical fisherman at this park. He or she is drinking the wrong beverage, and they're drinking it in much too social a setting. They need to do more silent brooding and less cheerful, hops-laden socializing. Either that, or someone needs to teach them all the difference between a campfire and a trash bin.