The stream’s last defense was the thick alders that lined it, so thick that I doubt thorn bushes could have done much better at all to keep us out. The Lost Boys had told me no waders, you’ll destroy them in there in two minutes. I left my waders behind but questioned it of course, but now I could see, I could confirm. Pushing though the undergrowth, I felt a stinging on the back of my left calf, and then the same on my right thigh as alder branches that were intertwined better than the fibers in a rope held me back as I tried to push through. They grabbed fly rods, slashed at faces, pulled hats from heads, but in the end the will of the fly fishermen was more than they could hold back, and we stood at the water’s edge.
There’s never enough time for fishing lately. But even though time on the water is more valuable than gold this time of year you can always find something to connect you to the waters and the fish once the work day is done and dinner has been eaten, once the kids have gone to bed, and for me, once the wife has turned on that godforsaken Hallmark Channel where every movie seems to have the same plot and the same two female lead actors. I know when she flips to that channel without even being in the room. I can only describe it as a disturbance in the force. It’s as if a million voices suddenly cry out in terror and are then suddenly silenced. But like I said, even though it’s dark before dinner and icicles hang from the eaves outside the windows there’s always a way to stay true to the cause. For one thing there’s fly tying, and for another there’s a never ending list of books filled with fishing stories.
I just started this too late. I wish I’d found fly fishing much sooner in life. It could’ve saved me a lot of heart ache. A lot of anger. A lot of depression. What you’ve got to understand is that even though I’ve always fished, there were a great number of years in between being a long haired head banger in high school stricken by the need to hunt bass in farm ponds with spinning rods and these years now, that I find time fleeting and calendars shrinking as I dream of chasing fish to the ends of the earth with a fly rod. The years in between were a distracted time the way I see it. There was always a fishing rod leaning in a corner of a closet or the garage that came out a couple times a year, but there were too many things taking my full attention, leaving almost none for the fish and the places they could be found.
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