Some of us have put in more time that others but in my limited experience I have found that there is no mathematical representation that can be concocted to hypothesis success in this particular cruel venture. Linear, polynomial, logistic, nada. Bi-polar perhaps, but no other type of condition or equation can help you figure out just when it will happen. Our rag tag group of steelhead bandits has done their fair share of traveling over the years but to be honest, the majority of our success has come on the lost coast, not the Pacific coast. There is just something about these fish though. The mind is captivated at the shear spectre of the fish that doesnt eat. The fish that is as sleek as it is tough. The fish that seems to live not in reality but rather in the created space reserved by those who need such a thing because they cannot find solace in realism. Words become sounds in the mind of a reader of of McGuane or Geirach and the repetitive whisp of the anchor being placed is enough to sustain you until you get into the water. The rip of the current as the D Loop forms causes explosions in your sensory palace and at many times that is what gets you through the time away from the river. That is until you get there, and these things are your only reward.
No one here, reading this piece, that has made it this far, is unfamiliar with the sensations I speak of. No one here is unfamiliar to lonely, cold, unfruitful steelhead days. Heck, that is what makes it so obsessive. And that is why it so obsessive. The return flight home after a cross country trip to chase unicorns is always an entertaining one. It is always full of lament or jubilation. This time it was different though. It was almost as though there was a lack of emotion, an absence of thought, but instead a completed feeling of nothingness. It was neither positive nor negative but almost could be described as fulfilling. For it occurred to me in this moment that the natural world is truly one of the only places left where the saying “Nothing worth getting comes easily” holds especially true.