I walked into the tackle shop and was immediately uncomfortable. An older gentleman stared at me from behind the counter. I stared at a rack of rods in the middle of his store. None of them matched the display. And I, apparently, didn’t match his customer base.

It was a bad vibe.

The guy didn’t know me from Adam, didn’t know that I work in the fishing industry and didn’t know that I would put him on blast. (Sorry dude, not sorry.) The store is located in West Yellowstone, Montana, but it’s not the one next to the supermarket. It’s beside the place with color-coded t-shirts. No names though.

West Yellowstone is actually a hotbed of fantastic fishing stores and fly fishing shops. Maybe the guy was having a bad day, maybe he thought I wasn’t going to buy anything, or maybe he just didn’t like the look of a long-haired, bearded kid walking through his shop, though I would be surprised by that out here, in the part of the world that pioneered the look.