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The True Cast – Respect
“Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.”
How does one begin to explain “respect” in the context of a leisure pursuit—fly fishing—that largely revolves around sticking a sharp hook in an animal’s mouth, and then pulling it around by the face, only to release it and let it go, maybe having snapped a photo or two for posterity… or to make a…
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The True Cast – Just knowing they’re in there
My friend David’s house was right on the river. He was kind enough to let me park there and fish the big bend out back. And often times, he’d come out on his porch to chat with me as I made some casts. I remember one evening in particular, when a burst of hatching mayflies…
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The True Cast – Poise
Even now, If I could earn any one word, it would still be “poise.”
The tallest one-word compliment I ever got in my life came from a high school English teacher, Bill Schoff, who was tasked with providing one word to describe a student upon their graduation from Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Mr. Schoff was a magnificent writer who contributed to The New Yorker and many other…
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The True Cast – Patience
They say “patience is a virtue” and I’ve never encountered any situation in this world that better fosters patience than fly fishing for trout. In many years of fly fishing, including both great successes and dismal failures, I have learned that the number one factor that separates a truly great angler from the rest of…
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The True Cast – Joy
They say that if you find a profession where you do something that you genuinely love, you never really work a day in your life. I write and edit magazines about fly fishing for my job. That’s led me to visit and fish 29 other countries around the world, five continents, four oceans, and all…
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The True Cast – Small Water
There’s this corny (but true!) saying that describes the “stages” of an angler. First, you want to catch a fish. Then you want to catch a lot of fish. Then you want to catch a really big fish. Then you want to catch many big fish. And then… when you’ve done all those things… all…
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The True Cast – Hope
The beauty of trout fishing is that it inspires hope. Plain and simple. That’s where it all starts and ends. Think about it. Every cast you make ignites a tiny little episode of hope. Hope is what keeps bringing anglers back time after time You drop that cast right near the spot where you saw…
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