I may suffer some insecurities from time to time but worrying about whether people identify me as an avid angler is not one of them.

But some of us evidently need a little bit more to affirm our fondness of piscatorial pursuits.

Otherwise, there would be no need for “Fishouflage.”

Never heard of it?

Neither had I until a friend recently e-mailed several Web links about the stuff to me.

Now, I’ll admit to having my interest piqued a bit over the idea, illogical as it might seem, of a camouflage for anglers.

I mean, what kind of pattern or colors might actually hide or minimize an angler and his movements from a fish?

And if it worked, well, wouldn’t that be something!

But it turns out that making anglers invisible isn’t the point of Fishouflage at all.

Indeed, spokesmen and marketing materials for the product unabashedly admit right up front that the stuff which resembles conventional hunting camouflage except that instead of oak leaves and the like, the patterns consists of aquatic vegetation with various fish species lurking in it, won’t hide an angler, a boat, or anything else from our quarry.

Fishouflage is — in the words of the company marketing it — “designed wholly and solely to be the ‘lifestyle identifier’ for the worldwide angling community” and “created for those men and women who take their recreational fishing so seriously that they chose to be called ‘anglers’ instead of fishermen or fisherwomen.”

Wow! Now this sounds like some pretty serious stuff.

Not that I’ve ever worried about it but that I’m frequently out on the water with a fishing pole in my hand ought to be proof enough that I love to fish.

And if I happen to be sporting a bit of unshaven stubble and smell faintly of fish, so much the better.

Professional angling gurus like Al Lindner and Chad Morgenthaler are even touting the stuff as the uniform of the future for the really serious angling masses. With straight faces, no less.