How to Catch Fewer Fish and Find Contentment: Go to Cheesman Canyon

As I age, finding contentment in fly-fishing can be an issue. After 45 years of fly fishing and being a guide for almost 30 years, it seems a bit silly, simply trying to catch more and more fish. The obvious question arises; How many fish do I or my clients have to catch to feel content?

I hear that many folks who enter fly fishing do not remain in the sport. For many,  fly-fishing does not become a recreational way of life. Some people no longer find contentment in the sport after they have reached certain goals in a few years. They fish to check it off as on a bucket list and when there are enough checks, they bail.

Trying to find contentment by being more and more successful (catching more and more and bigger fish), seems to me to be elusive and self defeating. For me, I have to seek something else.

I used to think that watching a young kid catch a big fish on their first outing (with the help of a guide like myself) would "hook" that kid for life. Not anymore. I wonder if any of those kids are still fishing now as young adults. Too much success early on does not result in the kind of contentment I am trying to describe. Perhaps we need to stretch out the process over 20, 30, 40, 50 years. If a child catches a trophy fish on his or her first outing, where does that child go from there?

Contentment develops from the process; the "journey" as we like to say. Many fly fishers my age remember the days when as children, we fished for hours, days, weeks, and years trying to learn to entice a fish. We learned to problem solve. We learned to wait and to wait and to wait and when we finally caught a fish, even a single fish, we felt a special contentment of having figured it out.

So what do I do now as a 56 year old fly fisher? One way I can find a different type of contentment is to go to Cheesman Canyon, catch fewer fish, yet, experience  a unique type of satisfaction. Many fly fishers would probably agree with me that one fish landed in Cheesman Canyon is equal to ten fish landed in 11 Mile Canyon. Cheesman fish are just tougher to entice. The fish lay deeper and tight to the seam lines. They are wild fish.  The fish I do hook know how to dive down deep into the boulders and get free. Trying to catch fish in Cheesman is not like "shooting fish in a barrel."

So for me, if I want to find a special contentment that sustains me over the next 50 years,  I go to Cheesman Canyon.  I will probably catch fewer fish but that is fine because I am after "some-thing" else.  With each fish I might manage to hold briefly in my hands, I remember what fly fishing meant to me from the beginning and what it will be in the end.

I can now be content.