TIME
Have you ever stopped to think about the importance of time? Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and decades; they come and go before you have ‘time’ to recognize their passing. Solomon, the wisest man of his time wrote, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens:”Ecclesiastes 3:1. He went on to conclude that time is the essential component of all the events in our lives. There is a time for us to be born, a time for us to laugh, weep, love, hate, mourn, plant, harvest, speak, get, lose, war, peace, and finally a time to die. [Ecclesiastes 3:1-8] He concluded that “He [God] has made everything beautiful in His time,” Ecclesiastes 3:11.
Our lives are controlled by time. Equally important is timing. Consider fly casting. The key to successful fly casting is timing. Rush the back cast and you may end up wearing your fly as an earring or you may hear a sharp ‘crack’ as your fly detaches itself from the end of your leader as it whips around faster than the speed of sound! Screw up the timing of your ‘tugs’ on a double-haul – too soon or too late – and the desired results is lost.
Timing is also important when presenting an artificial fly to a rising trout. When I am watching a trout rising to either dry flies or emergers in or just below the surface film I try to determine if the trout has established a rhythm. If the hatch is especially heavy a feeding fish may take the naturals in a regular rhythm. The fish rises, takes an insect, and settles back into its holding position. Many other insects float passed and then the trout rises again and sips in another insect. Often this rhythm is as regular as the ticking of a metronome. In order for the anglers artificial to be taken by the feeding fish it must arrive over the trout when it cycles through its rhythm. Too soon and the fly will be ignored, too late and you get the same result. Timing of your presentation is the key to success.
Timing is important when fishing a specific hatch. Many species of insects hatch at a specific time of year and at during a specific time period during that time. The famous ‘Hex’ hatch that many trout anglers anticipate each summer is a night hatching insect. Occasionally, on a very cloudy day they will be found hatching, but if you want to find these insects hatching consistently you need to be on the water after dark. Similarly, tricos, those tiny black and white mayflies that often hatch in tremendous numbers on certain trout waters, hatch in the early morning hours, sometimes before sunrise. The spinner fall follows immediately after and often even during the hatch and on most waters the hatch and spinner fall will be over before 10 A.M. If you snooze you lose!
There are occasions when time and timing are both beyond our control. I would loved to have seen the salmon and steelhead runs on the Northwestern rivers before our modern civilization with its dams, water pollution, logging and overfishing killed those historic runs. I was born too late. What was it like to fish for the native grayling on the Au Sable River in Michigan, or to fish the Pennsylvania spring creeks with Vince Marinaro and Charlie Fox? Once again I was born too late. Both the time and the timing were beyond my control.
While I missed out on some things that I would have loved to experience what I do have is today. The best time is now because it is the only time that we have. The important thing is to take advantage of the time we have and not to worry about the time that has passed. Go fishing today, tomorrow that favorite stream, that favorite place may no longer exist. Talk to a friend today, tell someone special that you love them, tomorrow may be too late. Don’t regret tomorrow that you did not take the time today!