The Ithaca area is, if not the most enlightend place in the world, certianly just about the most politically correct. This political correcteness extends even into the blood sports.

Well before the recent scientific demonstrations that fish indeed feel pain (duh!) there have been pockets of local fishermen who though they might take and eat a trout now and then, would commonly fish with flies which were not just barbless, but quite hookless and, pointless, the point being only to raise the fish and bring it into sight, just to get a tug maybe and a flash of that mystical skin. If women had skin like trout, men wouldn't go fishing.

But lately have appeared those who insist thhat fish have not only the ability to feel pain, but the sense to feel insulted and the right not to be harrased. The most extreme of those are rod carrying fish activists who use fly rods and flag like flys to herd the spawing rainbow trout of spring and the browns of fall, upstream past the fishermen toward the more protected upland spawning runs. This has led to conteraccusations of fish harrasment, and several stream side rod fencing altercations, with everyone claiming to be the defender of the fish, and the friend of beauty, turth, and justice. We life to cast a fly, but have not been fishing in two hears. Not as a matter of principle however.