MONDAY MORNING LESSONS
Great first Monday of 2021 to you all! I was certainly surprised at all the angst focused on 2020 in the media and from friends and acquaintances. Maybe that is because it sit feels like 2020 … just another “Blursday” around here.
The weather was exceptionally blasé last week, so that probably had a lot to do with folk’s attitude toward the ending of 2020 as well. This Monday the sun is shining bright, it’s warm out in the daylight and … okay, that is about all the lipstick I’m putting on this piglet year.
GOOD TIME FOR LESSONS AND PRACTICE
I am more heavily booked doing fly fishing lessons here in DFW than at any time since I started teaching lessons, and it shows no signs of letting up ay time soon. I will be available for fly fishing lessons in The Woodlands or Houston all next week as well. The problem is, we are also experiencing shortages of fly rods and other components right now as well.
There’s not much I won’t do to spread this addiction, and I still learn a lot when I am teaching … For example, I learn a lot about the things I do (when casting) that I take for granted. They are mostly small things, but they can add up to be a big deal. I also enjoy it when things “click” for someone, and the line loads, the loops tighten and with a little luck the student “feels” the right things starting to happen.
Of course another great thing about teaching fly fishing lessons is getting some much needed practice myself! And that is what I want to pass along this morning: Be sure not to put your casting away for the winter! I am beginning to recognize that muscle memory has been permanently imprinted by the Kreh Cast, but muscle strength? Keep moving, and keep casting whenever you have the chance – to keep your strength and endurance up. Challenge yourself this winter, if not with fly fishing, then with becoming a better caster, and staying in condition.
Forward we go into a New Year, one probably just as unpredictable as the last. Sedition is in the air but we can soon put politics to bed for a long winter night, and hope that when it awakes it will again be right. With good fortune we may actually be able to move freely about the Country before spring slips away again for another year. Like I have been telling people, “It’s not the locations we go to (to fly fish), it’s the getting there” that can kill you.
OTHER GOOD DISTRACTIONS
These short days of isolation can also be good for reorganizing you fly tying fung shui, and ordering those missing components we’ll need for peak season. Unfortunately, the new showroom at Barlow’s Tackle on I-75 is still not open for public access, so that makes me want to visit it even more! When we’re reduced to online ordering fly tying supplies, it really levels the competition between a store like Barlow’s and places like The Fly Shop, or J Stockard Fly Fishing. And you will certainly find more new cutting edge materials at those last two shops because fly tying is a priority, not an afterthought.
Category: Adventure, Body-Mind-Soul, Casting
