A Bad Day Fishing
"A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work."
I'm sitting before the computer screen trying to remember a bad day fishing…and I'm admittedly having a great deal of difficulty doing so. I guess the reason why is that I never have equated fishing with catching.
There are many times I've fished all day and caught nothing. "Got skunked," as we always called it. But those weren't bad days; only fishless days. There were always abundant compensations, either good weather, the sight of a mink slipping furtively along the bank, waterfowl trading up and down the river…and always, of course, there was the river itself. Just being in the river, feeling its embrace is enough to make it a good day fishing!
And what about those days when I fell in? Well, that's just part of the game; scarcely something to spoil an outing. I always keep a change of clothes in my truck, so, after I fall in, I just put on dry clothes and go back to fishing. No big deal!
I remember one day that might have been a "bad day" candidate. Walt Canfield and I fished Beaver Creek in Minnesota in what could only be accurately described as a "torrential downpour."" After several hours of unrelenting rain, there was a welcome lull in the deluge. I asked Walt if he thought it would rain any more. His quick response was: " oh, we may get a few more sprinkles, but nothin' to amount to anything." That one comment alone was sufficient to make it a memorable day. It also made it apparent to me that my angling mentor, Walt, thought there was no such thing as a bad day fishing!
Thus from my perspective, there are only good and great days fishing--it's an "attitude thing," you know!
So I encourage my fellow anglers to define "successful fishing" in terms other than how many fish are caught. Rather define it in terms of how well you cast that day, what you saw at streamside, what you learned, perhaps even what poems you composed while indulging your passion for angling.
Fifty years of fly fishing, and not a single bad day--not a bad endorsement for angling I'd say!