The river was quiet that morning. Only the sound of water spilling over an old beaver dam and an occasional squirrel screeching from a distant tree broke the silence. I knelt down into the shallows of the river and dislodged a small stone from its resting place. With cold wet fingers I peeled away a layer of moss and mud and found several critters burrowed beneath.

“I just might have a match for this little guy,” I said beneath my breath as I reached for my fly box tucked snuggly against my chest.

I had made a point to get to the river early that morning despite the colder temperatures. So far the trout had been keying in on midges and based on my recent sampling of the water that trend seemed to be continuing, at least for the short term. After a quick scan of my box I decided a mercury midge would be a good variation so I pulled out a size 18 and tied it to the end of my tippet.

“There, good to go, I said to myself, as I clipped the tag end from my double clinch knot.

Just then I heard a voice from behind me. “How’s the fishing?”

Startled, I glanced over my shoulder to see a younger gentlemen walking down the trail just several feet from the river. He was decked out in full fly fishing attire, big butterfly net, and a rod adorned with the brightest orange fly line I’d ever seen… what I like to call trout repellent.

“Not bad,” I replied, as I turned my attention back to the river.

“I got nine so far, he touted as he walked past. They’re taking midges”.

“Oh really,” I whispered to myself. Thanks for the tip”.

Nine fish, really? Exactly nine? Why not say I caught around nine, or round it all the way up to ten for simplicity sake. Though somewhat annoyed by this youngster at the time, I can’t really blame him I guess. There was a day I too kept track of every fish I caught. No, I was never brash enough to randomly tell a complete stranger my fish count, but if asked I was ready to tell. I think we’ve all had those days on the river where we’ve counted every fish we got to net, even some of the ones we didn’t.

There is a point though (if we fish long enough) where our expectations change and what was so important to us in the early years seems less relevant now as we broaden our skill set and begin to enjoy different things about the art of chasing trout. I’ve had one or two fish days that are more memorable than forty fish days. It all depends on the story behind the catch. Was it a trout I was sight fishing to for an hour and finally fooled into taking some obscure fly I dug up from the depths of my box? If so that’s a memory worth the weight of forty trout.

I think time on the water has a way of softening us, leaving us less to prove. Not that we’ve arrived as fly fisherman, but that we are ok with the fact that we haven’t, and probably never will. For only after making fools of ourselves long enough do we finally wake to the reality that maybe it wasn’t so much about how many fish we caught or even how big those fish were, but just being out on the water was enough.