The Dues


Dues to the Fish



I remember being 12 years old going into my local fly shop craving knowledge about fishing and how to be a better fisherman. I would ask the big questions, questions like “How do I catch more steelhead” or “How do I catch bigger brown trout” and could remember hearing honest answers referring to different flies and tactics but one reply I was a little too young to understand the power behind it, “If you want to catch more fish, go fishing more, you’ll learn the rest if you pay your dues”. Me being twelve years old I pushed that comment to the side and kept digging for more than people were willing to give. They put the hard work to obtain such knowledge and it only made sense to make me do the same.

 Everyone can watch a video or hear a story as a source of knowledge but the first-person experience is unbeatable. In a video, you see what they do, what they use, and how they do it, but what It lacks is the whole experience. Sight, sound, touch, smell, and sometimes taste are all senses used in a day of fishing. The ability to live the whole fishing experience allows you to pick up on more than what a video offers. After years of fishing and catching fish, you get this “It feels fishy” instinct and you simply cannot obtain that instinct from a video. In real life you can put together why did that fish bite. On the water you notice temperature changes, more cloud cover, less cloud cover, more wind, less wind, active aquatic insects, the list in unlimited. These patterns start clicking in your head as you gain experience. After years of fishing you have so many connections between conditions and probably fish behavior.

Fishing gives you confidence. All successful fisherman have one thing in common; confidence in what they are doing. Confidence is obtained by proving to yourself that what you are doing works. No one can make you believe in yourself and your decisions better than you can. Exposing ourselves to as many different conditions and rivers allows us to build confidence in any situation. Even on days where everything isn’t going right, and things aren’t happening, keeping confidence in what you are doing in the end will convert more of those bad days into great days on the water with more fish in the net.

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