It's been said most of us fall into one of the above
groups. That we are geared up to figure out problems
meticulously using just one side of our brain; or we
just let the problem sort of soak into the other lobe
and hope for the best. Why worry. I guess I agree with
both methods. And yet I continue to write these things.
Week after week. Pounding and pounding information into
little skulls of nothing but mush. Trying to get ahead
of the curve and inject some information about fly
fishing and tying and casting and all the other wonderful
things there are to know about.
So what happens. Little. Okay then, darn little actually
gets utilized. That's it, utilized. Taken in and put to
some use. Take like stringing up a fly rod. How many ways
are there to get it right? Or wrong? Now add those together
and you can see my problem. Are the wrong ones really all
that wrong? Well, if some of them will cause you to break
your fly rod, what do you think? But, let me take this
problem a bit further now. Suppose a reader thinks to
himself he really is not that far along in fly fishing
and certainly doesn't need to learn any fancy way of
stringing up a fly rod. He will prefer to continue doing
it the pain old fashioned country way, thank you very much.
If he reads it at all it will be just that reading the
words and not actually understanding them and worse yet,
not for a minute considering making the idea part of his
ritual of doing things. Hey, some guys just go at things
in their own sped and own way. And I am not about to begin
to interfere. There is a flaw with his slant on the subject
though. Since he see's no reason to learn or even consider
the mundane ideas on some of this he will likely, sooner
or later, bust his fly rod stringing it up.
And he will not remember reading about it before. Because
he didn't. He didn't read about it. He skipped it. He didn't
need it. Let's hope he isn't standing in the front of a
bonefish boat when he is stringing up his rod. Let's pray
it is not the first day of his vacation in Belieze at a
thousand bucks a day. And it's his only fly rod. For a week.
Now there is this too. I get questions each week about
things. Email and private messages wanting to know little
details about all matter of fly fishing related things. Do
I want to help them? Certainly I do. Often I try to give
them just enough information to keep them going even further
into the subject. Like this question this last week. Good
for him. Thinking all the way. He wants to raise some nymphs.
I don't know why. So what. Way to go. Lots of reasons to do
it. All valid. So now he wants me to send him information on
what to feed them.
Should I? Seriously. Should I send him the magic formula
for nymph mulch. The exact chemical composition of the
well known food used in all of the nymph labs in every
country in the world. Each and every testing facility,
with all the white rats, and mice and pinkies, and cats
and dogs and monkeys and beetles and even aquatic nymphs.
The phone number of 'Nymph Nuggets' Inc.? Do they even sell
to regular folks? How should I know anyway?
I don't know. I think maybe I will tell him to just grab
a gob of the weeds the nymphs are growing on and hope for
the best. Who knows, hell it might work? ~ James Castwell
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