I have fished almost all of my life. My father brought me fishing at the tender young age of 6. I remember it well. We went fishing in a small pond out in a small rowboat he had built himself. He was fly fishing and I used a cane pole. We both caught fish. Good stuff!

As I grew older, I progressed to going out myself to fish... to helping my Dad build a 44' sport fisherman out of welded aluminum in our backyard while in high school and through my first years in college. We fished in the Gulf of Mexico for red snapper, king mackerel, tuna, marlin, etc. throughout the ?70s. Fished for speckled trout, redfish, bass, etc. in the marshes of south Louisiana growing up, and lately, have moved up to Maryland where I took up fly fishing and tying my own flies for trout.

I went to school to be a marine biologist and I am now an AFS-certified fisheries biologist working for the federal government. I am a normal person who likes fishing and when I made the decision to take up fly fishing, I read everything I could on the subject...I bought the latest gear, costing more than the car I can?t afford...I decided to go the ?purist? route and spent literally thousands of dollars on materials to tie flies too tiny to see without magnification (e.g., I spent $300 on hooks in one day!)...I now wade out into a ice-cold rivers beating the water to a froth casting to fish too small to eat...I tie on flies too small to see onto leaders and tippet materials too thin to feel...I typically let go the first cast of the trip, only to get hung up in the tree branches directly behind me...I re-tie the tippet onto the leader with a knot not normally in everyday use...I re-tie a fly onto the unseen, unfelt tippet...throwing my first cast back up into the trees. Once resigned to re-tying a new tippet onto the leader, I go to trim the excess line off of the knot only to cut the line instead of the tag ends; again, having to re-tie the unseen, unfelt tippet material back onto the leader and again attaching a fly with a hook that has an eye too small to be seen...ad infinitum.

While fishing on the Gunpowder River just north of Baltimore, I had an epiphany: fly fishing is not something to be enjoyed; it is an activity in Zen mysticism! It is literally a self-induced, personal workshop in frustration management. I am happy with this discovery; it makes me feel alive!


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Cajundood