Dirty Fishing

Ever feel dirty when you fish? You know, wading a small local creek or fishing crummy, dirty water for trash fish, bream or whatever. Stomping through muck, snagging your line, getting your rod hung up in brush. Wearing moderately priced fishing gear whilst casting a rod that costs a few hundred dollars - throwing some nasty fly you pieced together with some flash because you know some stupid, tiny sunfish will hit it.

For some reason, slodging through a crummy creek simply for the purpose of getting out and taking anything that will hit my fly makes me feel a bit guilty. Even a bit dirty. Like I shouldn't be here. That I am an idiot for fishing this lousy creek when I should be in fact, fishing better waters.

Bluegills and sunfish are probably my favorite fish to land. Somehow, they make me smile. But for some reason, I feel that my fly rod should be landing smallmouth bass on a quality creek.

For some reason, I do prefer fishing brackish water - those creeks, waterways, ponds and lakes the way I want to do it. Yes, for some reason, I feel stupid fishing a mud hole with a GLoomis rod and wading in my Simms waders.

It makes me feel like a man to hunt out my own fish - muddy water and dark lake depths in fashions so unlike drifting dry flies. So far away from that romantic cast and fancy fly fishing photo moment in an artsy fartsy "scene from a magazine."

I take my fly rod and fish how I want. I march to my own drummer - not really the beat of a different drummer - just my own. My own thoughts and styles, my own streams and holes. Especially, my own abilities to fish those tough waters - those unkempt and unmanaged waters.

Those guys with their high dollar waders and fly gear - with their guides, trying to land trout. Sure it takes some skill. But it is as fun and having a bass smash your fly or a bluegill tugging at your bug? Maybe . . . but at least I can do it without trying to look like some yuppie who just finished watching "A River Runs Through It".