Fishing with low expectations
This weekend was certainly deserving of a blog post. We’ve been a little out of the writing game; the fish have been biting, the weather has been wonky but surprisingly helpful and our friends and clients have been anxious to get on the water, both around Baltimore and in Western MD. In short, things have been kind of busy and that’s great but it means that we haven’t had a chance to write it all down. Not to mention the host of more important things happening in the world.
However, when you get a few joyful days with friends it’s important to stop and reflect on the fact that we’re lucky enough to still have those moments. We won’t recount everything from this weekend quite yet, but I will tell you about Friday.
On Friday evening my buddy Adam and I headed up to the Gunpowder after some rain just to get out of the house. We’d both had kind of long work weeks and, coupled with baseline COVID stress, we were both anxious to get on the water a bit. We had low expectations but fishing with high expectations is mostly always a mistake. After waiting out a passing rain storm with a beer we hiked down to the water to see if we couldn’t put some space between us and the world for a couple hours.
We didn’t fish for a couple of hours. We fished for all of 90 minutes.
By the end of those 90 minutes we had both landed our personal best brown trout from the Gunpowder…twice. We each caught two big browns on little streamers, each bigger than the last. After the final one with about two hours of light left we called it a day. It was one of those fishing anomalies where everything works out a little too perfectly and you’re left standing, looking at each other trying to decide how to best hang on to the moment. We decided the best thing to do was walk back to the car, recounting the experience the whole way. I could spend far too long telling you about the fine details of the type of fly, the size tippet, the weight of rods and the “technique,” but frankly that would be a bit boring wouldn’t it. It’s also most certainly not the point of this post. It’s also why you should hire a guide :).
There is a moment in fishing (and in many hobbies, especially during these unusual times) where you realize that the goal has been accomplished for that day. I don’t mean the goal of catching two 18 inch brown trout , which is a fine goal to have, but the goal of simply “feeling better.” Sometimes it takes an 8 hour float trip to achieve it and sometimes it just takes 90 minutes, or maybe even just 5 casts.
I said earlier that fishing with high expectations is a dangerous business. I should clarify. If the expectations for the day are contingent on catching fish then you’re destined to eventually be disappointed. But if your expectations for the day are grounded in enjoying a beautiful evening, hanging out with a good friend, sharing some laughs at a time in the world when it’s hard to do that, then i’m fairly certain your expectations can be regularly met. Four beautiful trout just helps push you over the edge.
Friday evening is the reason I wanted to start guiding in the first place. It wasn’t about catching big trout and it certainly wasn’t about money…it was about guiding people to moments of joy. Moments that override a stressful week and become THE thing you remember. Flip Pallot says something similar about “guiding people to the happiest moments of their year.” That feels important, especially now.
This weekend reminded me that the expectations need to always be grounded in the journey and not the end product. Guiding walks a fine line where often times people expect the fish to make the whole experience worthwhile. I encourage you to meet me halfway on this. The memory of those four trout specifically are quickly fading (that’s why we take pictures I suppose). But the memory of eating fried chicken on a car bumper, of drinking a beer or laughing about your work week, I would argue that those are the things that truly make it all worthwhile. The feeling of the collective joy in those small moments adds up. The fish only serve to punctuate those events, they’re not the actual writing.
This has all been said a million different ways. I’m certainly not saying anything new, but it’s good to occasionally remind ourselves. At the end all we truly own are our memories and if our fishing memories are solely about fish then we’re missing out on so much. So, when you do catch that personal best brown trout or land your first steelhead on the fly, take a breath and lookup. You won’t remember the fish’s spots and your memory will quickly obscure its actual size but you will remember all the things that brought you to that moment. Those are the things worth preserving. When it comes to those things our expectations should always be high.
-Nick