Why Is It Fun?

I asked a question on a forum regarding what made fly fishing so much fun

The more I read the responses and the more I mused about my journey, the more I am sure that its the whole package.

I have shared that since a small boy living in a project in Manchester, NH where there were woods, fields and brooks nearby—and how those places outside were for me a needed refuge and safe place. Such has been true for me till this day.

I was on a trip to Missoula with a friend to spend time with his son who was attending college and while surrounded by the fabulous beauty of that place, I got my start. The son was working as a guide for a local outfitter and we got to hang around, fish a slough outback and drifted the Bitterroot, Clark Fork and Blackfoot. I bought a Fly Logic rod on that first trip and was taught a simple pick up and lay down cast as well as a roll cast. It was poetic and connected me in yet another way to the natural world that I love. The others gave it up once back in NH— I was, however, hooked. I managed to make a number of trips in the following years to the Missoula Airport–couldn’t get enough. During the years that followed, my beloved NH woods and streams began to take on a brand new way of loving me back; while my dogs and I searched the kinds of places few go. There are waters. There are gorgeous ancient critters in those waters. The fly fishing itself, is indeed fun…but divorced from the rest? No–my need is broader and deeper.

The Creation itself speaks volumes to me.

Still; that little boy lives in an aging body…not diminished.