Drag Charlie...

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a review of a new fly fishing movie from Australia, Jindabyne.

"Altman borrowed an idea from a short story written by Raymond Carver. A group of avid fly fishermen have hiked half a day to reach their favorite fishing hole when a dead woman comes floating down the river. Figuring that there is no way to predict how much longer the fish will be biting but knowing that the woman can't get any deader, the men decide to anchor down the body and keep fishing. Later, the men get a tongue-lashing from one of their wives and ribbing from their friends, but there is no major fallout from their behavior"

This new version of the story makes leaving the body bobbing in the river more about race and bigotry than fishing but we can't help but be reminded of a float trip of our own during which a fishing buddy narrowly cheated the grim reaper. His brush with death caused us to debate this very point and we came to the conclusion that since the fish had been biting pretty good, the order of the day would have been "fish the hole, then drag Charlie...Fish the next hole, then drag Charlie." You get the picture.

Apparently this sort of thing is the kind of ethical debate that anglers have discussed through out the years. Just check out this thread on our favorite Southeast fly fishing forum.

"for some reason I would draw the line between body and skeleton. Newly dead body - hike out

skeleton - fish my trip and tell somebody after I hike out. don't know why that makes a difference."