Why I Love To Do What I Do

Hayden With His First Trout On The Fly (click image for detail)

    Why I Love To Do What I Do

 

 I’ll be the first one to tell you that I love my job. The old saying, “ Do what you Love and Love what you Do,” seems to cover my feelings about owning a fly shop. Every once in a while, an event happens that not only breaks up the sometimes monotonous every day retail sales gig, but also touches one’s heart and reaffirms why I love to do what I do. One of these reaffirming events happened recently and I thought I would share the story.  

  Just before the summer started, a grandmother named Robin called me and told me she would be staying in the area for the summer and had a young grandson named Hayden that was eight years old and would be visiting for a week while she was here. She explained that Hayden had an interest in fly-fishing, and wanted to know if he was too young to learn how to fly fish. I told Robin that if Hayden had the interest and wanted to learn, I would be glad to give him a lesson. We decided to set up a lesson for the day after Hayden arrived to visit so he would have time to fish during the rest of his week in Bend.

  We met in the morning and Robin, Hayden & I headed down to the river for his lesson. Now for a very young man, Hayden did very well paying attention and keeping interested in the lesson. But he is a young man, and occasionally a caddis would flutter by, or some geese would land on the water, or an ant would crawl by in front of us, and we would have to take a break in the lesson to chase the bug or watch the ant.

  Hayden picked up the casting pretty quick and was able to maintain a good loop, lengthen line and present the fly to the water. He listened closely when I described bugs and their lifecycles, their hatches and how we used artificial flies to imitate the naturals to catch the fish. We finished the lesson at the shop where we talked about the leaders, tippets, and practiced the knots needed to tie it all together. As we worked on tying tippet to leader, and fly to tippet, Hayden told me about the fish he wanted to catch. He told me  he had been watching them near his grandmothers house, and they were jumping out of the water, and they were near the bank, and they would jump out of the water, and next to a bush, and they were jumping next to the bank (Haden was a little excited). At this point he had figured out they were eating something, and I asked him if he could see anything on the water they might be eating. He remembered our earlier conversation, and told me he couldn’t see any bugs on the water. I told Hayden that maybe he could not see the bugs because they were very small dark bugs and very hard for us to see on top of the dark water, but the fish can see them because they are looking up and could see the dark bugs against the light background of the sky.

  Robin had bought him a fly rod & reel and we set up the line & leader and picked out a few flies for him to try, a few small dry midge patterns and a couple of small nymphs. It’s funny how a grown man will panic and break out in a cold sweat when you suggest tying on a size # 22 midge pattern, but a young boy just goes “OK”. Anyway, Robin and Hayden thanked me for the lesson and headed out to enjoy their day.

  The next day I was working in the shop and I answered the phone and all I heard was silence on the other end for about ten seconds, so I said hello again and waited and a very small voice said….this is Hayden. At first I could not hear him, and I asked who’s calling? The small voice said…..this is Hayden, and then it clicked and I remembered my young student from the day before. I asked how he was, and before I could get it out, he very excitedly exclaimed  “I Caught A Fish!” “You did!” I said very excited for him. “Yeh!” He said, “and I caught him on top with the little fly you gave me!” He then got very sad and told me he had to let it go because it was only 5 inches and it has to be 6 inches to keep it, and if it was only 1 inch longer, he could have kept it. I told him I was very proud of him and it was ok to let him go, because now he can go back and try to catch him again. Then he switched back to super excited again and said “ Yeh!! I’m going to go catch him after The Kung Fu Panda” (a kids movie playing at the time) I asked him if he got a picture of it, and he said his grandmother had taken his picture with the fish. I told him if he brought it in I would put it up in the shop. The next day, Hayden came busting through the doors with the picture in hand and very excited to show me. He retold the story like an old pro, of how he caught his fish to everyone that was lucky enough to be in the shop at the time.

  It’s experiences like this that truly reward me for what I love to do for a living.

 

The Patient Angler

Peter Bowers