Why Do I Fly Fish?

Sometimes, when I'm laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and trying not to slip slowly into madness, my mind begins to wander.  Sometimes it is about why we park on driveways and drive on parkways.  Other times I wonder if I REALLY could save money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.  Then there are other times where I venture into the recesses of my mind and dip my toe into a philosophical pool that lies near the ideological part of my brain and I wonder, sometimes aloud yet in a hushed tone, why do I fly fish?  

Sometimes to arrive at an answer, we have to reverse engineer the darn thing.  It's almost like breaking down a lawnmower engine, just to see if you can put it back together.  To arrive at why I fly fish, maybe it would make sense to identify why I don't prefer other methods.  For example, I'm probably too old be be toting around a Zebco 202 like I did when I was nine years old.  However, if YOU can still pull that off, you probably look pretty gangster and your persona most likely screams "I know who I am and I need a shovel because I dig it."  I'm also not a fan of worms.  I mean the parasitic kind as well as the nightcrawler type.  Don't get me wrong, I'll still drown a worm to catch a channel cat in a farm pond...but I've been there and done that.  Finally, conventional fishing is just too easy.  Soft plastics, spinnerbaits, and crankbaits just aren't able to get that feeling of a lightning storm in my amygdala.  I still get excited about hooking a bass on a spinnerbait, but it doesn't evoke the same emotional response as hooking the same bass on a streamer that I tied.

With the why nots out of the way, maybe we can dissect the whys and end up with some sort of witty retort to the aforementioned question.  Maybe it's because I like to make a hard thing harder.  As if it isn't hard enough to get a fish to actually bite a hook, set the hook into it's mouth, and get it to your hand before the knot or line breaks or the hook pries loose.  Add that to the fact that flies don't smell, taste, or feel like actual bait and that makes fly fishing look like quantum physics.  

Or maybe I love to fly fish because you never stand still.  I'm pretty sure I've got me a little bit of some undiagnosed adult ADHD, so the constant movement suits my personality pretty well.  I have the patience of a gnat when it comes to waiting for things as well.  I would rather make something happen than let it happen.  Stripping line, casting, and peeling line off a reel is my version of a fidget spinner.

Those reasons are pretty good, but I think there is one stronger contender for the championship belt.  I think I love to fly fish because it isn't supposed to work.  Fur and feathers aren't supposed to out-fish molded plastics or glitter infused plastisol.  Fish are supposedly too smart and too keyed in on the environment to be fooled by some hand-made craft project with a poorly concealed metal spear and barb protruding from it.  Don't even get me started on how you aren't supposed to be able to fly fish for anything but trout that live in a mountain stream!  Yep, I think I pretty much nailed it right there!  I love to fly fish because it's like a penguin.  It's a bird with wings and feathers that can't fly.  While most birds can't swim under water very well penguins look like little bullets shooting through the water!  I like fly fishing because it is like a penguin.  Neither are supposed to work very well but they are actually pretty amazing because they do!