Bass Fishing Technique

Question:
I was looking at the video River Runs through It. It seems to show a fair amount of finesse to fly fishing. I perceive there is a fair amount of snob appeal to fly fishing. Perhaps maybe to a lesser extent there is finesse to bass fishing. I was thinking of the various casting techniques and analyzing patterns etc. The pros on TV seem to show it.

Answer:
I'm a fly fisherman and a bait caster and to me fly fishing is actually easier than bait casting. The thing is that most fly anglers fish for trout and most bait casters fish for bass. Trout -- at least the smaller ones -- generally feed on tiny insects. Our beloved bass will eat anything they can get in their mouths. So the lures (flies) that you use to catch trout are smaller, lighter, more delicate, and some would say more beautiful, than the hunks of plastic, metal, rubber, and wood that we use to fool black beauties. I'm a southern boy, so perhaps what I say next shows my southern prejudice, but think that one reason fly fishing seems chic and high class is that the earlier American fishing writers were mostly from the north. They were educated men and they wrote about their sport in the language of Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, and Emerson. When they spoke on the subject, their accents betrayed their Ivy League backgrounds. Bass fishing writers came later on the scene and many of them chose to write in a more folksy style ala Mark Twain. When they spoke orally they dropped their "g"s as in "casting' "or "fishing' " and they used words like "y'all". So I think the reasons that trout/fly fishing today seems educated, upper class, and more skillful, and bass/bait casting seems redneck, working class, and less skillful, are (1) trout flies are delicate and look like beautiful works of art, while bass lures are simply hunks of stuff with hooks sticking out. and (2) to the northern ear, many prominent bass anglers sound like they didn't finish high school -- that is, they sound like they come from Tennessee, Arkansas, or Texas. I, of course, come from Texas. So take it from someone who loves fly fishing and bait casting. They both require skill and finesse. I'd hate to have to give up either type of fishing.