The Disease!
I made a pact with a freind that both of us will return our next fish. This ain't to prove anything but I just want to give back. Let me explain.
First of all let's get one thing straight, there is fishing and then there is salmon fishing. Two completely different things. Like if anyone compares bass fishing to salmon fishing then, we have a problem. Salmon fishing without a doubt is probably the most humbling practice any man or women can do. It will absolutely break your heart. It's not uncommon to talk to people who have spent their lives trying to catch a salmon.
It takes a very strong love of a river to stick at it. Its pure love, its wanting but not getting, it's believing without seeing, it's heartache but you keep trying. Sometimes when you think it's over and you will never pick up a rod again, the unbelievable happens.
Now it's not like that for everyone, you got the cold hearted masters of rod and line. The angler in the shadows, who won't budge for no man. These are assassins brought up in the world of salmon hunters with traditions and experiences that the mire mortal cannot understand. These are the secretive elite who won't break on information and speak in code. They are a dying breed but they are still about.
These are the guys that I grew up around, the elite killers of salmon and sea trout. I have personally witnessed mass murders on the river Bank. I have seen things that no boy should have ever seen. I watched and learned but I broke away. I decided to share my experience to the world. I would not hold down the pools and rivers that once were unknown. I would give to the world what was given to me.
What was it all for, the disease of fishing is a real thing. I watched anglers catching salmon but they wanted more. I have watched freinds fight and try to drown another in his waders. Salmon fishing is medieval were political parties get involved from time to time to calm down warring families.
When I talk about salmon fishing I include the netting and poaching in that. We all have the by the way angler, on must rivers, who we all know is scoping a place out. He asks questions even might tell you, you are doing that wrong! He looks for information with rod in hand, knowing that night could make him hundreds if not thousands with a net in the river.
The riverbank is a place I like to spend my time, it's where I learned to find my way home. It sometimes the reason I get up at 4 and head straight for the door. Its also a place where I have experienced terrible heartache. I have definitely lost more than I have caught. In reality I think a normal person would pack it in but I'm addicted. I think I have learned to keep it under control, I think the secret is to keep it a secret. Don't let people know the extent of your problem. It's my cross that I must carry but I do still get the excitement as I got as a child. I still ask God for rain but not too much. I vary it up now, I don't spend all my time on the river Bank, I fish for bass, wild brown trout and everything else.
Salmon is the one tho, the old story of the salmon of knowledge I often think about that but I think its in the catching not the catch that we find the answers. Tight lines...