Caddis Chronicles

Yes, it is true, on any give day any number of us fly fishermen are full of **it.  It happens.  We get skunked and have all kinds of idiotic excuses as to why.  It is the nature of our predicament.  We are fishing, and fish do what they do, and we being "smarter" than them fishes, rationalize our failings.  The interesting thing is that we failed according to our own expectations - the fish don't give a rat's ass whether or not we caught them.   

And we do have excuses.  There weren't enough bugs on the water.....the weather put them down.....I didn't have the right fly (whatever the hell that is/was)......it was too windy......and so on.  The fish don't cooperate, and we blame it on them.

So is it possible that the trout just don't give a damn sometimes?   Maybe they need a rest, or take a break, or have their own agenda.  Can they have an agenda?  Do they think or feel, "Man am I tired." Why is it that we, the almighty fly fisherman, think that trout even think?  They don't.  And sometimes, we don't, and that's often the problem.

Trout have absolutely no clue what we think or care about.  All they know (and I use the term "know" loosely, since trout have no cognitive abilities) is that they are hungry, or not, and they want to survive at any cost.  They (the trout) may require rest, or down time, to recharge their batteries, and so they ignore every morsel that floats by them be it real or artificial.  Who knows, maybe they are sleeping after a rough night out.  

In the end, it is the fault of neither fish nor fisherman when the fish don't bite and we go home with an empty feeling that somehow we failed.  Of course, that is what keeps us coming back for more, because we did fail - we didn't catch anything.  So we "have" to go back and catch something next time. That, and the reality that we want to once again stand in a clear, cool stream as it flows around our legs and sings a song that only water can sing.  We can't resist the blanket that nature wraps around us, our senses and our mind, when we set foot in the watery world that defies our being.  Fish can live there, we cannot, is there anything else we do in our lives that has such contrast as to be of different worlds?  

Insects, and the fish that feed on them, live and thrive in a world where no fisherman could even so much as breath a single breathe.  The dynamics of water and of air, other worldly, yet so intertwined.  Are the differences of our existence, fish and man, so simple as to be the thin line that is the surface of water where it meets the air? 

It is, and it is not.

The line that truly separates us is somewhere in the dense gray matter that makes us tick. 

The fish, they truly do not give a damn.  If they can even do that.

So go fish, take it all in, and when you catch something, behold the life that lives where you cannot.