Thinking about fishing memories this past week.
The moments I remember the most, that live in my minds eye, the moments that I can play in my mental movie theater are not the moments I am holding the rod.
Nope.
The moments I remember most, that I relish in, that make me smile are the moments when a guest, a friend, a family member are fishing.
I sit in the boat watching fishing. That is my job. I truly love coaching, watching, learning, and enjoying others fish. Those are the moments I love.
I love watching anglers succeed. I love watching trout eat a dry fly. Refuse a dry fly. Or just observe trout simply rise.
In the moment when you, I, are fishing is a different joy. I love feeding trout. But, I do n to see the entire scene. I see parts of that scene when. actually angling.
To really see all the components/moments, parts, visions, the entire scene…you must be observing and watching.
I would argue that most of my learning about the cast, rising trout patterns, i.e. fishing, have been spawned by the moments not casting. Those images and learning nuggets come when I am watching anglers fish and cast.
And, looking at a moment through the lens of camera erases the memory of the moment, in your head, in your mind. Truly.
The moments I remember most, that I play repeatedly in my head, when laying in bed at night, when daydreaming on a flight, when fantasizing about the next great mayfly hatch are those moments when I am watching, viewing, digesting the entirety of the event.
Watch, and learn.
And re-live.
Set the rod down, hang out with some friends, and simply observe.
And re-live.
4 Comments.
Sitting here in Idaho thinking about my nearly 19 years as an angler in Montana. The best of those days occurring on many different systems. March madness on the Big Bitterfoot, down God’s Country Way, when on Spring Break ’10, suddenly every fish on the upper river was rising and yet a couldn’t catch a one, but I go back to that same place year after year hoping for it to be the same and that this time I’ll be ready. Will it ever be? No. Will I ever be fully ready? I’d like to think so. So I drive there and think “hashtag: it’s just nice to be out here,” recalling those warm spring days in my 20s when life was simple and I fished more than I worked. Funny though, how after all these years my calendar still revolves around the next aquatic insect hatch. Which for our purposes here today may be an egg. All I know for certain is that my dad is wrong when he says, “You’ve spent enough time fishing,” I mean he’s way off. He actually said this! Oy. More like, how about no. I haven’t even spent enough time just watching. Just being in the “environs where trout are found” to paraphrase Robert Traver. But as I approach my 40s and yearn for a spring day on the waters east (or west) of the Great Divide, I know that I’ll soon by parking next to the interstate and be climbing over some rickety ladder and barbed wire fence to get to this place where the geese are deafening and threatening, just to plop my duff down in the dirt and watch. Watching the boats go by. Watching the guides guide, the funny-looking ducks bop around in the muck, and I’ll feel the hazy spring sun upon my bulbous nose again and that’ll be a damn fine day. – Nick Cricket, The Montana Tonight Show.
Good stuff
Love it. This photo I think is from 2016-17. And I remember this day vividly. Big shout out to the dude in the front seat, friend of HH, Patrick Fulkrod. All the way from Tennessee, Patrick runs the South Holston River Company. It is on my bucket list to make it down there for some trout, smallmouth, and squirrel hunting!
Mark
I starting reading, I continue reading, your words because they have always filled the hope I carry that someone living within a Montana river system enjoys, loves, is truly fullfilled daily over the course of their lives (every day) as much as I do on my trips my sojourns to my OZ which gives a bank along a river created by mountains where the hope of seeing a ring within a rise happen not only on the days before one arrives… I have been fortunates to meet you , and the passion that flows so naturally from your pen is in fact met by the reality of your you…what a gift to be granted a passion a love turned into vocation…but to help others in need of a lasting view from afar….these blogs are needed by me, mostly thousand miles from where I would rather be… and even more so today watching events and actions unfold that seem to echo nothing but uncertain and fear, to read your words snd to know they are so real, not fake news, nor a marketing pitch… genuine passion for that which so many hope wish dream of experiencing daily
B u brother … peace calm