This is the email I sent to Bill after hearing this song.......

Bill,Gary Lewis sent me your rough cut of the Flyfishing Blues. I think you did a rather splendid job of capturing all the symptoms of the illness that some people casually refer to as flyfishing.I was stricken with the illness when I was a kid in Montana.

Each spring I would spend weeks writhing from withdrawals waiting for the end of the runoff. Then at last, the magical day would arrive when I was free to peddle my oversized 10 speed bike, in a pair of 40 pound Uniroyal hip boots, up a questionably maintained county road to seek treatment.

This went on week after week until my mother discovered that our chest freezer could no longer be used for the family's benefit due to the igloo sized blocks of frozen 6" ( ok..., 4"-6") brook trout that had accumulated there. She immediately called for an intervention.

It looked as if my addiction might have been stemmed at that point if my father ( I now refer to him as the "enabler") hadn't bought a smoker, allowing my illness to proceed un-checked for my entire youth.

I now have three boys of my own... 3, 6, and 8. My wife and I have tried our best to shelter them from my addiction, but they have started asking uncomfortable questions ( my youngest asked what a woolly bugger was over Christmas dinner). Last fall I caught my oldest boy in the garage assembling an old 6 wt of mine, he said he was "just experimenting".

I have decided to just honestly discuss Flyfishing with my boys rather then having them learn about it on the streets. Your song paints a vivid picture of what a grown man can be reduced to by "experimenting" with something as dangerous as Flyfishing.

I hear golf is nice.

Best Regards,

Dean Teegarden

WiggleFin, Inc.
208-388-8539
dean@wigglefin.com