Unless you’re the inestimable H.I. McDunnough, you rarely know that you’re in the salad days until you’ve left them. And if you haven’t seen the masterpiece that is the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona, you should go watch it so you understand that reference.
I wouldn’t put myself on the same plane of philosophical insight as Nicolas Cage’s character, but I do think that fly fishing gives you the chance to reflect on life a bit more than the average hobby. Those stretches of silence between hook sets are perfect for thinking about how you ended up standing in a river and waving a stick all in the name of fun. All this contemplation is probably why Paul Schullery once wrote that calling fly fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job. Both end up becoming lifestyles.
This is a long-winded way of saying that, on a recent trip up to Wyoming’s high country, I found myself thinking that maybe I’m smack in the middle of those best fishing days of my life. I’ve long thought that was my time in college, where I built my spring class schedule around the afternoon blue-winged olive hatch. Sure, I was broke in college and couldn’t travel much, but I lived 20 minutes from the creek and always found enough gas money to go fishing more than I went to work.
In those days, I was putting anywhere from 250-300 days a year on the water. Now, I only make it five or six days in a row before my back starts demanding I both take a break and finally start going back to the gym.
Other than being in better shape and having slightly more money, the biggest difference between college-aged me and my current self is the way I approached fishing. Back in college, fishing was everything. It was the only thing to talk about, the only thing to build my days around, the place where I spent literally every bit of free time I could. Dating, family, and friends largely took a back seat to standing in one of the local rivers. If I wasn’t fishing, there was a pervasive sense that I was missing out on something, even if the weather was lousy, the bugs weren’t on, and everyone agreed the fishing wasn’t great. I fished with a frenetic energy that I bet was exhausting to be around.
On that Wyoming trip, though, our day started at about 8 a.m., and we didn’t even leave the Best Western until close to 9:30. Our first stop was a small creek in the middle of the sagebrush breaklands, where the flat prairie is forced into mountain foothills. There, my buddy Ryan hooked and landed a few fish during the end of the trico hatch, before we set off for the high country.
Barely an hour later, surrounded by aspens burned gold and red from the changing seasons, we parked the truck and hiked through knee-high grass down a steep slope to where the river crashed through a narrow canyon. The water was low, so we picked apart the deeper pools and runs, moving methodically through the water before looking at what might be upstream.
It was the complete opposite of how I would have fished this river more than a decade ago. I’d have been there at the crack of dawn (even though there’s no need to be fishing that early), covered more water than I could reasonably fish, and hiked back to the truck in near-darkness, likely unsatisfied with the fishing. The bugs weren’t terribly active, and the trout were sulking at the bottom of pools. I caught more whitefish than trout, an outcome I’m fine with now, but wouldn’t have accepted all those years ago.
Maybe the freedom to fish my days away wasn’t the Shangri-La I’ve always considered it to be. The slower-paced, purposeful fishing, and the time with my good friend Ryan, was infinitely more fulfilling than any of the days where I fished 12 hours straight, caught a lot, but always felt like I hadn’t caught enough.
Call it perspective, or growing up, or whatever, but I much prefer the way I fish now. There’s something to be said for slowing down and smelling the flowers, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that the fish will always be there.