Will it ever get old ??

[JohnScott]

A couple days ago, I was having a cup of coffee at one of our local shops. I was thinking about fishing the day before on a Northern Idaho freestone stream that has been regularly giving up good numbers of fat, healthy, beautiful West Slope cutthroat to large dry flies.

The sight of a cutthroat trout rising through crystal clear water to take ( or even refuse ) a dry fly is one of the great sights in fly angling. Some will hit the fly very aggressively, but more often the rise and the take have something of a casual quality. And in the water I've been fishing, the norm is to see the fish coming to the fly from some distance, often off the bottom of the river, before they get to the fly. Only when the light and water surface conditions obscure subsurface movement, is the take a surprise.

I was thinking about the last fish of the day, about the clear, deep blue sky, the green forest rising up and away from the banks of the river, the jumble of boulders at streamside, the bluegreen surface of the crystal clear water, the large salmonfly pattern drifting down through the pocket just above a partially submerged log, and the movement of the cutthroat well before and as he hit the fly.

That's when it occurred to me.

Will it ever get old ??

John

[Betty Hiner]

Nahhh ... WE will, but, that won't!!! <admittedly, it does keep us from getting old too quickly!)

[lastchance]

I'm 58, John, and I still get that thrill and feeling of contentment. It's so addictive, like a drug, that's why we're hooked. Continue the enjoyment, buddy.
Bruce

[Panman]

I hope not!!

Tim

[Lotech]

Like Betty said.

[maodiver]

I don't fish enough to get jaded

[NJTroutbum]

No....there is something about the connection between a rising fish, and a fisherman, that remains. It's a hook that can't be shaken. You may take it into the backing and downstream quite a ways....but somehow it always seems to reel you back in.

[bluefish]

I'm guessing your question is rhetorical, and somewhat tongue and cheek, but for me the answer would be yes. It's a qualified yes, depending on how challenging the fishing was. If it was relatively easy, say just getting a good drift and being moderately stealthy, I'd could easily forego it. For me after decades, certain challenges appeal, others not so much. After the untold thousandth rise, the image and the subsequent events are burned into my memory. Do I appreciate it any less? God, no. If not, perhaps more. I just choose to not repicate that memory very often. I don't think it's a question of stages, as in the ones supposedly, we, as flyfisherman wade through. More, I think, it's part of our temperment and pychological make-up. I probably suffer from ADD and am too fidgety and pig- headed to appreciate the finest things in life. So, if you don't get tired of it? In my opinion you're truly blessed.

Charlie

[TyroneFly]

I can't imagine it every getting old.

[JohnScott]

Admittedly, there are days when it is too easy, when it is time to wrap it up and go someplace else, or home.

And it is the tough days, the days when I really have to work to find and hook up a fishy, that keep it interesting and keep me coming back.

Looking forward to one of those tough days today, and I'm pretty sure the river and the trouts are going to accomodate me.

John