Fishing

The electric presence of life that you feel, the pulsing force made by a smallmouth bass while I am extracting the hook, pales in comparison to the furious plunging fight he makes after being hooked  but it is much more immediate.

The struggle to free himself transfers directly to your hand without any interference from your rod. You have a chance to briefly come eye to golden eye, something that nearly never happens in everyday life.

You are able to witness the vibrant iridescence of his goldflected skin, the dappling of the sun upon the greengold surface, which is almost never a part of your life, as your whiteboy legs are never a part of his world.

The allure of fishing for me is just this moment, fleeting, where both the fish and I are in the same place, in close proximity, brought there by our own relentless drives.

A sense of competence in finding the spot in the river that makes this mystery happen seems to carve the experience into your consciousness and  causes you to reseek it every year.

During the times when you are not landing a fish, you experience the fantastic pressure of the water, relentlessly moving, surging, evermore downstream, clear but colored by the light and shadow playing on the gravel bottom, speckled with shell-fragments.
Greg Adams, August 2015