"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons; it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
-Walt Whitman
Details
Yesterday I noticed the details. I often get wrapped up with the end result, the goal, so much so that I forget to pay attention to the little things along the journey.
When fishing I often get so consumed with getting the "money shot" of a fish that I neglect all the artistry that's found in between. I often don't notice how delicately beautiful a dry fly is on a strand of fly line, the eruption of a release, or the peaceful water droplets that appear when a trout is feeding on the surface. I get caught up, as a lot of us do, with catching the fish that's "slurping" and not notice how beautiful that act is, in and of itself.
Thankful Thursday
Today I am thankful. Yesterday was a full, rich day filled with being outside and fishing for trouts. Jacob and I continued our quest to be able to catch stocked fish on dry flys. We succeeded, again. I suppose that due to the lack of rain these fish have become wise awful quick, adapting to their surroundings and no longer being fooled by "junk food." This makes my heart happy, as I loathe catching fish on eggs and worms, it just feels too much like bait fishing. Although, I'm sure that just comes back to the quality of excuses anyhow.
Trout Bum
When I removed my Chacos for the first time in two weeks and washed the last remains of Colorado away in the cheap motel bathroom I felt my heart break, truly break for the first time in a long while.
Read moreMy Public Land
You know that special creek? That one you go to time and time again because it seems like there’s something magical about it? It isn’t a particularly popular body of water, in fact, most people don’t know about it, and you really like it that way. You aren’t going to catch a 27-inch brown trout out of it and you probably aren’t going to catch hundreds of fish a day either. It’s not the absolute most beautiful creek that has ever been and hopefully it’ll never end up in the “top 100 streams to fish.” It’s a creek that doesn’t ever seem to fail me. A place where I feel like I know every brook trout personally, and maybe by now I do.
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