Maybe you fish, but chances are you're not a fly fisher. After all, only about one in every 10 people who fish cast flies.

So, indulge me as I wring my hands amid reports this peaceful and engaging pastime is sliding toward the margins.

It makes me sad to think future generations may not get hooked on one of the best ways I know to spend time in beautiful surroundings. I've found no better way to connect intimately to water, itself a salve.

Come to think of it, maybe that's why we fly fishers have a reputation of being elitist. We know we're ensconced in something as good as it gets and other forms of fishing pale in comparison.

Nowhere are there more fly fishers than in the United States, not even in England, the cradle of modern fly fishing.

Be that as it may, the state of fly fishing is not good.

Our ranks are declining. All freshwater anglers dropped by an alarming 18 percent between 1996 and 2006, according to the every-five-years recreational surveys done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Fly fishing has caught some waves, such as a crest of popularity from the 1992 movie, "A River Runs Through It." And the catch-and-release ethic of fly fishing caught the fancy of many. But these boosts seem to have played out.

And as our numbers shrink, we're getting older. The average fly fisher is a white college graduate, older than 45, male and makes $100,000 a year. (I'm older and decidedly poorer than the norm.)

With the economy tanked, gear manufacturers are merging and going out of business. With big-box stores and Internet shopping, the old reliable local fly shop is finding it tougher and tougher to hang out a shingle.

I can't imagine not having fly shops around to get the lowdown on area streams and one-on-one help.

The only exclusively fly-fishing shop in Lancaster County, The Evening Rise Fly Fishing Outfitters, on Fruitville Pike, is being shopped around for a potential buyer.

But proprietor Nick DelleDonne is quick to point out that's because he is looking to retire after 20 years in the business, not because it's a losing proposition.

"I've got to slow down a little," says DelleDonne, who also works full-time as an Amtrak train movement instructor in Wilmington. "I'm tired."

As for the state of fly fishing, he maintains the sport is healthy, if not surging.

"It's not going anywhere," he says. "I see new people getting into it and other people putting it aside. The business is downsizing and people are watching how much they spend.

"It's not like it was, but you can say that about the current state of the economy in anything," says DelleDonne. "It's nothing a better economy couldn't cure."

When Kinsey's Outdoors near Elizabethtown opened in 1999, it carried a large selection of fly-fishing gear and fly-tying materials.

In recent years, it scaled back its fly-fishing supplies as interest waned.

But now, responding to requests from customers, the store will slowly rebuild its stock and have a separate fly-fishing section again.

"We'll test the market and see how we do," says Rick Kinsey, president of Kinsey's Outdoors. "We're hearing that the market is re-emerging a little bit."

But that hopeful bit of news is countered by what's happened over at Susquehanna Fishing Tackle in Lancaster.

Ten years ago, fly-fishing rods, line, reels, flies and fly-tying materials were a key line in the store's sales. But business has dropped steadily since then, says Mike Acord, the store's co-owner.

When local fly tier Ed Kraft died in 2009, the store stopped selling flies altogether. It had dropped fly-tying materials long before that and only sells a few fly-fishing rods and reels.

"We really haven't missed it too much," says Acord. "Every now and then a guy comes in who is disappointed. But I think it's bottomed out. It's going to be a hard road back."

Acord has some thoughts on what's to blame.

"It seems that guys getting into it are usually the guy who is 50 years old or getting ready to retire, or looking for something different.

"I can't put my finger on it but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's become such an elite sport. There's the dollar figure, the perception that it's very expensive."

He thinks the industry has shot itself in the foot, noting a recent decision by the fly-fishing industry trade group to not hold a joint trade show with the larger fishing tackle industry.

"To me the whole fly-fishing industry is a self-inflicted wound. They consider themselves elitist and hold expensive banquets and they don't want to be involved with the enlistment of youths, unlike bass organizations."

Indeed, perhaps most worrisome of all in contemplating fly fishing's survival is that younger casters are not flocking to pick up the torch.

You can't help but notice it on streams and in fly-fishing organizations.

Even the local Donegal Chapter of Trout Unlimited, whose membership, by the way, is at a record 600, has few young casters under 20.

"That's been a concern of ours for years," says former chapter president Ted Downs. "Who's going to take the reins when we're gone?

"Young people are so busy today and, in many cases, both the husband and wife work and they don't have time for this."

Not that DTU isn't trying. In June, chapter volunteers held their first kid's fly fishing clinic for 11- to 14-year-olds, complete with fly tying, casting and stream studies to show the life cycle of aquatic insects. They had to cut registration off at 14.

And Alex Smay, a customer service manager at Kinsey's Outdoors, says he's seen a "definite interest among kids" coming into the shop since the spring.

On a national scale, a National Flyfishing in Schools Program has been launched by the FlyFishing Education Foundation, in which students in grades 6 to 12 will be taught fly fishing by physical education teachers.

The goal is to have fly fishing being taught in gym classes in 3,000 schools in 25 states within five years.

John R. Wallace, a biology professor at Millersville University, got the fly-fishing bug about 18 years ago when he was in graduate school at Michigan State. He was doing research on caddis flies for his master's degree. One of the guys in the lab got a group of students to try tying their own flies.

They began fishing local trout and steelhead streams. Another fly fisher was born. Wallace's dream is to buy a house near Ennis, Mont., for an escape in his retired years.

"I've met a lot of fly anglers that know more about certain aquatic insects than I do in terms of timing of life cycles," he laughs.

Wallace, too, has heard the stories of fly fishing's demise.

"When I heard the guy, I started thinking, 'Oh man, is it possible fly fishing could go the way of the dodo bird?' I said to my boys, 'This is the summer you learn to fly fish.'

"I have all the skills to keep going and I can teach my boys, but if they drop it... I worry that future generations of people will not only lose the true, pure and honest way of making something and presenting it in a way to fish to make them think it's real and catching a fish that way, but that we're also losing true natural historians.

"People who fly fish know the biology, the timing of life cycles, what things feed on. Future generations will miss out."

The loss of fly shops and their personal relationship with customers would be another sad loss, he thinks.

"Mom and pop shops are a conduit of information. A guy in Ennis with a small fly shop would tell us what's hot, then he would show us on a map how to get there. Then he would give our kids a fly and that would excite them. You're not going to see that at Bass Pro Shops or Cabela's."

acrable@lnpnews.com