When I fish alone, I sometimes slip into a meditative state. It’s as if I concentrate so intently upon the water before me that the mechanics of casting, mending, and reacting use a portioned section of my brain. The rest drifts on its own with no sense of time, no feeling of cold, no connection to here. It floats and sifts my subconscious, working out worries and problems unbeknownst to me.
On occasion, my mind ends up adrift on some backwater pondering absurdities, the sorts of things that make you say, “Hmmm.”
For instance, why do people on the bank cast to the middle and people in boats cast to the bank? If they didn’t catch fish, you would think they would stop so it must work for both of them.
Why isn’t money ever on sale at the bank? I’d like to see twenty-dollar bills buy-one, get-one-free. President’s Day would be a good holiday to try a money sale. I bet they would have a line out the door.
If groundhogs are really hogs, why don’t we ever see groundhog bacon? They might not be much to work with at a pig-pickin’, but their bacon would be just the right size for a biscuit.
Would a psychic stay home on days she knew the fish weren’t going to bite? A skill like that could take the fun out of going. Maybe that’s why I never see them fishing.
If Waldo had a GPS, would we still be looking for him? Come to think of it, I haven’t heard as much about Waldo lately, so maybe he got one for Christmas.
Do women take up turkey hunting because they get to shoot the males? They certainly are getting outdoors in greater numbers of late. Maybe that’s the reason.
Is man really at the top of the food chain or are we just at the front of the buffet line? Those all-you-can-eat restaurants never go out of business. Maybe we took an evolutionary left turn.
And if you catch twelve trout on an inchworm, does that make it a footworm? Will we rename these insects if we ever go metric? Maybe that’s all that’s holding up the change.
When my mind drifts through eddies and swirls with questions like these, it’s probably better if I don’t go too long between bites.
Jim Mize sorts out the mysteries of a fishing life in his award-winning collection of humor for fly fishermen titled, A Creek Trickles Through It. For more information on this and his other books, go to www.acreektricklesthroughit.com. For other outdoor reading, visit www.sportingclassicsstore.com.