Beginners Luck

            The one thing I like to do the most is fly-fishing; the only thing I enjoy more than fly-fishing is sharing that activity with people. Of all the fly-fishing experiences I have obtain over the last seven years I found that the most fun experiences were the ones with beginners. I enjoy teaching people, not only are they learning a new skill but I’m getting them to appreciate the natural environment a little more. To appreciate something such as native brook trout, that could be lost for ever to the slightest temperature change, to appreciate something like tiny bluegills that there presents supports an entire ecosystem without them there are no predatory fish. The biggest thing I appreciate is for people who take time out of their lives and spend a day with my worthless life to go fishing. When someone bails on me when they said they would go fishing with me, lowers my self-esteem just a bit more. But when they do go fishing with me, it raises my self-esteem, and gives me a good reason to keep pursuing my most favorite activity of fly-fishing. A wise fly fisherman once sung “I got flies in my pockets, boxes full of dreams, 
So many places other people want me to be, 
Bills to pay calls to make guess they're gonna have to wait
I'm busy doing nothin' In the North Country, 
Trout, Salmon all around no hotels not even a town
Lay my head where it falls tonight, 
Wake up on the side of a stream cast my line tie on a dream, 
Waste another day chasing things with fins, Flies and fins are all I have, 
Some folks think its so sad, 
Coulda been a politician or scientist,
One of these days I know I'm gonna die
I work just enough to survive
Spend my time chasing fish and tying flies.”

Going Fishing

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When you go out fishing somewhere, the local bass pond or trout stream, what do you want to see when you get there. It could be the beautiful scenery; the wildlife could come strolling into view, but for me the one thing I want to see is the fish. I want to see the action of them striking that dry fly, the fight they put up against me, their vibrant colors, and then to see it swim away. That’s what I want to see when I go out fishing, but that’s not what always happens. What usually happens, I get excited expecting to get a fish strike, I get to river, get all rigged up and ready to go, make a couple of cast in one spot and then move on to the next one, I stay there till it gets dark, and when come to that time to go. When I leave with no fish my self-esteem gets lowered slightly more, when I can’t fool that dumb stock trout. I think to myself, I don’t even want to fish any more and if I don’t catch any thing its not worth going, but then I’m told maybe you should tie flies prepare a good mind set. So that’s what I do tie flies to clear the mind of all its frustrations. When I return to the river with a clear mind that’s when I do get a strike, I may have not caught the fish but getting a strike is just as good and I accept its not all about the fish. Its just being there is what it’s about.

Life in General

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In life I was never good at anything, from social skills to being intelligent. I’ve only found one thing in life that I do well at and that’s fly-fishing. So I figure if I try to relate everything to fly-fishing I may do better. When trying to fool that one 20inch trout you need the right fly and the right cast. So when meeting new people the right fly would be best choice of words and the right cast must be the way you act around them. And if you do manage to hook and land that fish you have a choice, will it be a keeper or catch and release. For me most fish its catch and release, and I rarely find any keepers or keep any. But there are still lots of trout swimming in the rivers and I guess I will eventually find my keeper. To translate your going to meet lots of people some of them will be worth keeping as friends and others are worth releasing. A wise man once said, “You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you might find, you get what you need”(Mick Jagger).