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KEEPING FOCUSED
By Chip Chipman
Warm drops of moisture were falling on the back of my neck and trickling down my spine. I was sitting with my back against a flat outcropping of rocks. Moxie, Harvey’s dog, was above and behind me. Her tongue was hanging out and she was panting from the exertions of a futile effort of trying to catch a rabbit.
I was the recipient of dog slobber.
We were several miles upstream from Harvey’s truck, taking a rest and having lunch.
Harvey was in a philosophical mode. “Fish are easy to catch when they are bitin’ steady,” he said.
“Wow! That’s a pretty profound statement, Harvey.”
“Thank you. There’s more.”
Harvey took a gulp of Royal Crown Cola. “Have you frequently missed a strike after a long lull?”
“More often than not, “ I answered.
“You may have been gawking around or daydreaming. There are times to take in the scenery and to dream about that new girl in your class. When your fly is in the water ain’t one of them.”
“Who, me?”
“Suppose,” Harvey said, “ that two fly fisherman are equally skilled in casting and line control and have equal knowledge of the ways of trout and the insects they eat. But, one always out fishes the other.
Harvey, my fly fishing mentor when I was a kid, paused to take a couple of big gulps of his RC, “What is it that enables that fellow to be better than the other?”
“I dunno”, I replied.
“It’s anticipation and concentration,” said Harvey.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they go hand-in-hand. Every time you make a cast you just know you are going to get a hookup. Of course nobody gets a hookup on every cast. Not even me. But when you anticipate that you are, and then you are prepared for the strike, you are on your toes.”
He continued, “It’s during those long lulls that we get flatfooted, so to speak. We lose concentration. And we are no longer anticipating that we are going to get a hookup on every cast. So, if you want to become an elite fisherman you have to maintain that concentration all of the time.”
Harvey chugged the last of his RC and belched loudly, “Remember that.”
“The belch?”
One summer many years later, Rich Dickson and I were on a float trip down the Green River from Dutch John, Utah, with our guide Bruno. The combination of the canyon with high red rock walls and the myriad of rafts filled with scantily clad young ladies diverted my attention from my floating fly. I missed several strikes in a row. It was clearly a case of sensory overload.
“Wake up, Chip! Bruno yelled.
“Yes, Harvey”, I mumbled.
“What’s that? Asked Bruno.
“Nothing, Bruno. Nothing at all.”