The half life of a fishing report is probably only a couple days, so rather than ramble on about the last three fishing trips I didn't have time to write about, I'll make an observation.

When I'm at the tail end of hike into the backcountry or heading home after a day spent laboring up and down the boulders and bluffs of a remote stream, the same thought occurs.

If I did this every day of the week, I'd be one thin, healthy, grinning, stress-free son of a bitch.



Life intrudes on that vision almost the second it occurs; mortgages, kids and clients are never all that far from the front of my mind.

And lacking a winning lottery ticket (I don't buy them, so my odds of winning are only marginally less than those who do), I won't be fishing five times a week anytime soon.

And despite the weight loss, fishing every day would probably become a chore.

My fishing horizon has shortened dramatically the last couple years, and I think that's why I've been on a backcountry/small stream kick.

At the end of the day, immersing myself in something wild (which means largely devoid of other people) feels pure -- like I engineered a clean getaway instead of a trip to the grocery store.



That's hardly the whole picture, but then, there isn't a "whole" picture. Which is why the "why I fly fish" essays never seem to work; most of us aren't really clear about why we fly fish.

I know I'm not.

In fact, it's a damned mystery.

We trot out all the usual poetic mechanisms (solitude, escape, nature, challenge, drunkenness, rebirth, etc), but in the end, we do it for the same reasons we eat certain foods and drink wine and hang around with certain people.

Because we like it and we don't break any laws doing it.

What else is there?

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.