What fishing means to me.

My mom took our daughters for the evening to go hang out with her and my nieces up in Pisgah, so my wife and I took the time to spend at a new lake that opened up about 45 minutes away, and also to walk around the Elkhorn river.

She commented that people are a lot like machines, and that they need to do different things to keep themselves healthy and sane. When I reflect on that comment, I think of an engine, and how the work they produce is directly related to the wear, tear and care you give each part of it.

In this Fly Anglers Online post, the author gives a very good description of what fly fishing means to them. I am back-linking to it because I think everyone should sit back and think about what their passion means to them as part of their machine.

One of my passions is obvious. And it's not just fly fishing, because I will spin cast with the rest of them any day. It's just wonderful, positive, memorable fishing with great people in beautiful places.

Fishing, to me, is riding in a rusted old, catalytic-converter-less Blazer up to bear lake with a 10 lb. bag of Maceys cheddar popcorn at my feet to play on the beach while my then alcoholic father - now sober for more than a decade - long-lined with his buddy for Lakeys while drinking their beers and making silly noises when their bobbers danced on the line. I was five. Being a thousand miles away from my dad almost constantly during my life was easier to deal with as I think about memories like that.

Fishing is waking up at five in the morning in the tiny, one bedroom apartment my brother rented in Nevada to go after Browns in Salmon Creek with a good old French Spinner. It was there I tied on, baited - with bright orange power bait, I remember - and cast my first hook all by myself. The fish I landed was two inches long. Might as well have been 18, I was so excited. The elation overpowered me as I gasped for breath. I did it, all by myself! I unhooked the fish and took off up the river to celebrate with my brother and stepdad. I was somewhere near ten years old then.

Fishing is the memory of sitting in my brothers green canoe on Pony Creek - with a .22 calibre bullet hole I deposited in it instead of my leg while floating the white river in Indiana sometime previously - and canoeing my heart out with him because we didn't have a trolling motor and wanted to give our spoon some action. We caught a perch, I think. I was about fourteen.

Fishing has always represented a bond with the most important men in my life - top four being my biological father, my half brother, my Savior and my Heavenly Father. There are many reasons why, and all are pretty private. I'll share them with those four guys, my wife and maybe some other family that can relate. Fishing is definitely a key part to my emotional, spiritual and mental engine, and I don't think I'll have any problem keeping it well oiled.