Fishing starts before I leave

My grandfather fished, my father fished, and they brought home so much fish that it was always part of life in our house. My grandmother made a wonderful fish pie. They started taking me along when I was little, and I learned by watching them, mostly ice fishing then, but in summer there were spinning rods and nets too.

One of the clearest pictures I have from childhood is my grandfather sitting for hours in the evening, making a fishing net by hand. He had these long lengths of twine and he'd sit there working on a net that he'd later fish with. Sometimes I'd come over and he'd try to show me how to do it, though I was still very young. There was something meditative about watching him.

A trip might mean a few days away, though that rarely happens now, or a weekend at a paid pond, a river or a lake out in the wild. Wherever I'm going, it starts for me while I'm still at home, getting my tackle together, packing a bag and laying out clothes for the morning. After a long stretch of work, especially when I'm mentally worn out, that anticipation already starts changing how I feel. I'm walking around the room but I can almost smell the river or the lake, picture the morning mist and feel that early quiet. In my head I've already left.

Sometimes the actual fishing goes like this. A friend I hadn't seen in a long time and I went to a pay-to-fish pond, where they stocked and fed the fish, so we figured we'd surely catch something. We got there around six in the morning and tried float fishing and bottom fishing, moved around the pond and tried different spots. By five or six in the evening we'd even worked out the shape of the bottom, and near the end we finally caught a shell. That was everything I brought home instead of fish.

We still had a good day. We talked, I went swimming a few times, and we spent the day outdoors together. Fishing isn't my job, so coming home with that shell didn't make the whole trip a failure. I go there to rest, whether I'm with someone or sitting alone watching the water, with a small fire nearby and my thoughts gradually settling down.

The part I don't like is how quickly it's over. A working week can feel so long, then you finally get out, unpack, start fishing, and suddenly it's evening and you're leaving the next morning. These days I only manage a proper fishing trip every three or four months, so there's always that feeling of, damn, how did it all go by already? But I come home rested, refreshed, even when there's no fish to bring back.