PROMISES, SECOND CHANCES AND LETTING GO

If there’s anything I’ve learned from listening to a lifetime of fish stories, it’s that the best ones are often unbelievable yet totally true. I have also learned that, at times, what we leave behind is often more important than what we take with us.

The fish you’re trying to catch really has little do with the amount of enjoyment that comes from its capture. In fact, the physical catch itself often isn’t nearly as important—or as exciting—as the journey that led you to that moment. The finest novelist couldn’t describe most of the greatest moments of a fisherman’s career—not because elegant enough words don’t exist to paint the picture, but because fishing in its purest form is a feeling, one you can’t fake and one that can’t be taken away from you. Nor is it an action. Rather, it’s a mindset, a way of life—a primal vibration stored deep inside the human spirit that rises to the surface whenever our hands touch the rod at just the right moment. It is rarely completely understood by anyone other than the participants.

The term “fishing” is often confused by outsiders as being a hobby. An onlooker might view the cumbersome equipment found on a gameboat as nothing more than a wiggling stick one dances above a country stream. But in reality, the apparatus are extensions of who we are: a direct connection to nature and a direct line to our soul. A panfish captured on a stick and a piece of string can be