Taking Good With The Bad
Sometimes you get comfortable in your element. The fish are coming easy; life is good. But every once in a while you need the fish to absolutely kick you’re (explicit) and remind you that it’s called ‘fishing’ not ‘catching’ for a reason. For me this happened recently. A good fishing buddy and I had been killing the early season salmon fishing in one of my favorite rivers for a few weeks. When other streams were still full of ice and vacant of fish this honey hole was consistently producing 16-22 inch fish. I mean it was easy, they were lying in the same runs, taking the same flies, day after day! So easy in fact that my buddy decided it would be a great time to teach his lady friend how to fly fish! Of course all this was decided quite late in the night over a few adult beverages, so without thinking he broke the #1 rule…NEVER promise ANYONE fish. It’s a curse, I swear! Needless to say we were up and at it bright and early the next morning all loaded up and ready for what we just knew was going to be a great day of fishing.
Fast-forward a few hours and there we were, waist deep in the fast current attempting to cross the river with a very unimpressed girl clinging to us for dear life. She swore we didn’t need to cross the river, that there had to be fish on that side too! But… the honey hole was on the other side… where we just knew the fish were guaranteed! After a quick casting lesson it was apparent that she was a natural and this was going to be easy!
6 hours later we were soaked, frozen, fishless and highly confused. The fish were there, even more than last time. You could see them. You could actively watch the fish avoid your fly! Like move out of the way! But try as we might we could NOT get a single fish to bite, let alone for our novice friend. The ride home was full of jokes, her assuming we had never caught a fish in our lives and us telling her she was cursed.
Despite our complete failure it was still a great day. In the end it’s not about the fish you catch, but more the memories you make and who you make them with. Weeks later we are still laughing about how bad the fishing was that day after how much we talked it up. What fun would it be if you caught fish every day? Fishing is all about the memories. The groggy early mornings and the late nights with headlamps. The broken rods and frozen fingers. The greasy gas station pizza and cheap beer. The days where you can’t do anything wrong and the days you want to give your guides license back. You take the good with the bad and at the end of the day if you’re making memories with good friends you come out on top. Now lets all say a silent prayer that we didn’t completely scare away my fishing partners lady friend!
p.s.- We do actually catch fish, and the smelts are running in the Moosehead Lake Region!
