When I was a kid, I was absolutely fascinated by my dad fishing gear box. It seemed to me that he had the most magnificent and varied fishing supplies imaginable. With his fishing tackle, he could trick any fish there was, or so I thought. He had many different flies and lures, most of them hand-tied and custom made by him. Except for the basics like fishing line, no one bought their own fishing supply equipment in those days. If you were a good fisherman, you made your own. It wasn’t just a matter of quality, but of pride.

I talked to him about this, and he said it was just a matter of him owning more sophisticated fishing equipment than my father had. He claimed that, had they sold GPS fish finders in fly fishing stores in my father’s day, everyone would have bought them. They wouldn’t have wasted time with hand tying their own fishing lures if they could instantly know where to get the fish. I see things differently, however.

In my mind, what my father loved so much about fishing, and what my friend and people like him miss, is the opportunity to commune with nature. Yes he was out there to catch fish, but in the process he had to know everything about a stretch of river. He had to know every ripple and what is signified, what time of day the fish came out, how precisely to land the line, and which fishing supplies to use in which season. It was a meditative activity that involved his whole being. In order for him to succeed at it, everything had to be done perfectly. It wasn’t simply a matter of looking at the radar and dropping a line.