When I look back at this blog over the last going-on-14-years there are so many cool stories of me running solo or with frineds or during the good old days with clients. Today I took a look at the "golden years", when I was guiding full time, meaning I didn't have a real job, and was giving it an all out push at making a living as a guide. I did that from 2010 to just about the start of 2015.
Rather than recap all of the stuff over the last 14 years, the boats, the houses, the clients, the presentations, the fish, and all the personal stuff that intertwined as I gave the guide thing a go, I'll just look at the number of posts. And that tells something in itself.
From 2011 to 2014 I was really on a tear. Lots of fishing and guiding, then a mix of the Upper Delaware and the Jersey Shore. Yearly post totals were 310, 337, 310 and 269. Then in 2015 something happened. I think it was then that reality set in in a few different ways. In Septmeber I was reunited with Theresa and started my journey back into nursing. It was a more consistent and stable job with actual income. In 2015 I was working at Monmouth Medical Center in the child and adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit and my blog post total was a mere 26.
In 2018 I was back in college at Monmouth University for my masters as a nurse practitioner and that years total post number was 79. It was also in 2019 that we moved from Red bank to Titusville and my fishing changed, now more river fishing then the beaches of the Jersey Shore. Trips to the Upper Delaware, which have gone down to about once per year, started about that time. After graduating and starting a private practice, and of course the covid pandemic, fishing was limited and the blog post totals for 2019, 2020 and 2021 were 199, 149 and 191 respectively. It wasn't until I started teaching in January 2022 did I get back into a good groove. They say teaching is more of a lifestyle than a money maker, and I believe that to be true. You work hard September to December, and then January to May, or maybe into late June if you take the extra semester on to teach longer.
Heading into 2023 I kind of like where I am, and where I landed. I am now able to just be an average angler. Long gone are the days of stress, and for me I mean stress, of watching the weather forecasts, trying to figure out where the days fishing will be, what float or where to go after launching the boat in the salt, and trying to give clients all that they expect when paying to go fish. Unless you have ever done it, for me, it is extremely stressful, and only after the day is over, after you counted your cash, and beat yourself up for what you did or could have done, can you exhale.
So now it's stress free. And I think the blog posts exude that. Yes, at times it's more like a diary or a book of one's personal journey thorugh life, but that's, to me, what fishing is really about. There are constants in life, ups and downs, new lives and deaths, new jobs, new houses, even new relationships, but the constant for so many of us is fishing. As you can see in the numbers of the blog posts over the years, they wax and wane, up and down, consistent with new responcibilities and challenges. But we always return back to the water. For some of us it's the sweetwater, others salt, for some a healthy mix.
I remember a few years back seeing the above image. Telling for sure. One day we will have to hang it up, and they say, as Al told me when he did, that he knew when that time came and he was okay with it. In the meantime, for whatever inert reason, we want and have to fish. I'm am not sure what my reason is, is it avoiding my own reality, is it a break from my own reality, is it to prove something to myself? I don't know, and don't know if I'll ever know.
I tip my hat to those who make their living in fly fishing. One thing I always marveled at was guys I know like Bob Popovic's and Steve Farrar never took a dime selling their flies. Yes, they made a few dollars off books and materials and designs, but their motivation, always, was teaching, instructing, and sharing what they had learned and their passion for fly fishing. I respect that greatly.
One day I'll have to hang it up, both fishing and writing this blog. If I croak today Leif has said he would continue it in any way he chooses to. I have to make it a point to sit down with him one day and go over how it's all done, otherwise it will be shut down forever. It's like a will, you don't know you need one until it's really too late.
So I expect 2023's blog tally at the end of the year to be about the same as 2022, about 275. If you take the lean months of January to March, and then the slow July to August months, you get just about 5 posts a week. I would really love to do more video, but if only knew how much work doing this with just still images is, you would see why I haven't delved in. That's why Troutbitten is done so well as I posted the other day. So expect more of the same. It would be interesting to see if we hit 800,000 in 2023. Get ready for the fly fishing shows, it's a lifeline for a lot of us until the spring.