Welcome to Critical Angling! This is my fishing blog, where I will post pictures and content related to my fishing endeavors, which include actually going fishing, being frustrated with online fishing communities, a range of observations of the fishing world from anecdotal to systematic, as well as some more creative pieces that attempt to capture some "soul" of the angler--myself. I am not a professional fisherman; I am an academic sociologist who studies fishing and fishermen(and women). From my sociology training, I take on the lens of an acute observer of social processes, including those that reproduce inequalities of race, gender, sexuality, social class, age, and more. Attention to these phenomena will always in some way color my writings. I ask many questions of the social world of fishing, which is a topic often ignored in other sources of outdoor writing. But even my efforts in publishing academic writings on the topic of fishing's social-ness are impeded by the slow process of peer-review and journal editing. So I want to share my unreviewed thoughts with you all, the fishing and internet communities. Now let's get to it.