Kate Watson kept seeing the same type of photo in her Instagram feed: a young woman holding up a fish some 30 feet from a shoreline with the hashtag #catchandrelease. “It was clear they caught the fish, walked to the camera setup, and, in their minds, released a safe fish,” says Watson, a fly-fisher in British Columbia who guides for Northern Outback Adventures. “But it probably died,” she says, referring to the amount of time the fish spent out of water. Much to her frustration, Watson saw professional teams signing on some of these women, who she considers good at Instagram but inexperienced as fly-fishers. Since she began guiding professionally six years ago, Watson has built a clientele and is now an ambassador for Hardy and Sawyer Oars. When she saw other anglers “fly through the ranks” solely because they had mastered Instagram, she became irritated. “It’s all about the picture now and less about the skill,” she says. “That’s the problem—the social-media obsession.” READ MORE
