Into the Maw

The novelist and sometime fishing writer W.D. Wetherell said that the difference between hunting and fishing is that hunters seek their prey while fishermen try to become prey; they do their best to make their lures look attractive and vulnerable so that fish will attack them. They succeed when they momentarily reverse the flow of the food loop.



Anglers become prey in another way. In winter, thoughts of the season to come swallow or at least nibble at hours of what should have been productive time. My professional life has tooth marks on its belly and a few shredded fins, like a trout fry that narrowly escaped the jaws of a larger cousin. We're a little over sixty days from the next trout season, and it's already sucking me in like a brown sipping crippled mayflies. I'm not putting up much more resistance than the insects.

Tag:Fishing