A Fly Fishing Life, and Doing the Hard Things

2022-05-21

Living a fly fishing life, being Troutbitten, is something that you can’t shake off. Your mind always churns over something tactical, like a fresh spin on an old streamer retrieve. Or maybe you’re daydreaming about the upstream reaches above the water that you chose last weekend -- fishing past dusk before walking out, a mile and a half, under the stars, by yourself, full of the satisfaction that good exploration brings. And you know there’s more to find — still miles of river toward those headwaters. So the questions and that allure o...

The next fishing trip is something to look forward to. And that’s the secret to happiness — always something to look forward to. Something to work on. Something to improve. Something to achieve.

These are life goals. And fly fishing for trout, like so many other great pursuits, gives our life a purpose, just by giving us the next thing to look forward to and the next thing to work on.

This is why we choose a fly fishing life. This is Troutbitten. And I’d guess that most of our listeners want the same.

But here’s the thing: There’s a difference between wanting it and working for it.

I think everyone imagines themselves deep into the middle of a sweetheart spot, with no one else around, casting and fishing for big wild trout that are eating our flies and coming to hand. Maybe it’s the rising trout at dusk, or a frenzied streamer bite in the morning as you cover water quickly. Whatever your favorite scenario, these are the idealized moments we imagine when we think of a fly fishing life. And, of course, those moments are there for us. We get a lot of them.

And yet, the amount of effort it requires to get there, the preparation, the planning, the failure and frustration requires hard work to get through all of it, and on to those best moments.

Doing the hard things. That’s what this podcast is about.

What are those hard things? How do we enjoy them? And what kinds of things are overlooked but seem to make all the difference?

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