Waxing Philosophical

I have a Sunday evening ritual which evolves right around the first dreamy thoughts of spring. I first check my blackberry (that's a modern day implement of slavery to you freemen) to see what my afternoons look like for the coming week.. Hm, Thursday or Friday look good- couple of things but they are... castable.... Then pull up weather.com (don't you love the access to fishing info) and Friday shows 50% chance of rain, but Thursday, cloudy 10% chance and 63 degrees. Mmmm, what sweet pickins. So I unload my booty from the recent Cabalas run and stow my tiny little flies (see note to self from last entry) and my 7x tippet and flat rock pool is already in sight, now I just have to keep my nose to the stone for the next four days and I'm in water.

The mission statement of Trout Magic really captures it all. Is fishing that important? No, but for those of us who have chipped the hard baked clay from our souls to find our spiritual moorings to this beautiful earth on which we walk with all of her lovely variety and thrilling wild life, the man made pursuits of modern man seem so... foolish. Yes, many people have their escapes. Many paint their faces on Sunday and scream their lungs out with 100,000 of their closest friends as gridiron monsters crash into each other in true gladiator fashion, and others haunt the man made valley's in search of that perfect swing and that elusive par, I hear the siren call of these "pursuits". But these are not by brethren, nor are the decaled, big motor, yankem into the boat, competitive fisherman. No, there are only a relative handful who have chipped away the last shards of adam's sweat induced clay and found the real peace, the real tranquility which a $1,000 rod and all the orvis gear in the world can't buy. I'm more akin to the little asian guys I saw sitting on a bucket drowning worms in the lake, hoping to fill that bucket with dinner. They fish out of necessity, to feed their bellies. I fish out of necessity to feed my soul.