Summer was over in the blink of an eye. When I look back on these last few months I see a multitude of empty fly boxes, drawers stuffed with mostly demolished fly tying materials with hundreds of empty daiichi packs scattered throughout, bald car tires, neglected household chores, and a bank account that ain't even worth 50 bucks. But I look back on this summer and feel an incredible sense of accomplishment. I spent this summer as a full time fly fishing guide. While spending my rookie season figuring out how many times I've said the word mend, I escaped the front range on my few days off to spend time on rivers in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. I stood in two of my greatest friend's weddings, eyes filled with tears of joy, watching them marry the loves of their lives. I sat in i70 traffic too many times, for way too long, telling stories of netting an absolute massive rainbow trout and taking an unintentional swim in the process. I hugged my parents after finally visiting my hometown for the first time in at least 5 years. I even got to go catch a largemouth bass with a popper on the lake I fished as a kid. The lake that taught me how to tie a clinch knot, how to let 'em run, and how badly a barbed piercing on your scalp feels. But the greatest lesson this water taught me was how fishing can provide you solace from a recent break up, comfort from the death of a close friend, or peace from the thoughts of my boss's latest "personally tailored motivational speech" I kept replaying over and over in my head.

Two of the questions you can absolutely count on answering every day as a fly fishing guide are, what're they bitin' on, and what got you into fly fishing. The first is simple, they bite on a good drift. The second has two answers, and neither are fish. For me, fly fishing gives you a way to heal from the negative things this life can throw at you, and a way to manage the work/life balance. Prior to my new career as a fish tickler, I was a mechanic. It was an extremely stressful work environment, so the work/life balance was critical for my mental health. The moment I was open to receiving the healing powers a river provides, it became the only place I've ever wanted to be. I found myself so obsessed that friends would regularly tell me about stories of a great time they had and always finish with, "I would've invited you, but I knew you'd say no because there was no fishing involved." On January 2nd, 2020 I was fired for the first time in my life. It was soon after that the pandemic hit. So while maintaining proper social distancing practices, I went fishing. I was fishing for over an hour a day every single weekday and fishing sun up to sundown on the weekends. I was tying bugs every single night while planning my next day's trip. I honestly missed less than 10 days total all year. It was on these trips that I was able to heal from almost a decade of going down the wrong career choice path. I healed from the relationships I ruined with people I dearly loved, old and new. But most of all I figured out that there's more to life than working on cars while having a bad attitude and tracking grease stains everywhere you go. Fishing is my greatest joy and has been for a great deal of time so the choice to change career paths was an easy one. You know the sayings, "life's too short to not do what you love" and "If you do what you love for work you'll never work a day in your life". But becoming a fly fishing guide tangled my work and life together into a mess worse than the knotted 3 fly nymph rig "Dave from LA" decided to re-cast over and over on my way upstream to fix it.

The burnout was real. I wanted to eat, sleep and breathe fly fishing, but here I am getting force fed fly fishing 24hrs a day every single day. I'm up at midnight making sandwiches and actually putting effort into tying a rainbow warrior that tomorrow "Steve from Dallas" is only going to decorate the bushes with, and thinking about the precious few hours of sleep I'm about to get. But quickly something incredible happened. I got a day off. I got a day off and I actually didn't want to go fishing. I woke up that morning and called some old friends that I hadn't seen in a long time to go play disc golf. I haven't held a frisbee in my hand in years, let alone hiked miles through the woods without a fly rod. It immediately opened my eyes to how closed off I've been to the other parts of my life that brought me joy. I traveled on trips in four states that weren't all 100% fishing oriented. I started writing music again. I went to bbqs. I went to concerts. I learned that because of my previous coping methods, I got so caught up in fishing that I was closed off to all of the other things in life that bring me joy. I successfully found more ways to unwind from taking people fishing than just going fishing. I became truly healthy, physically and mentally. I finally have a well rounded life. I never thought a weird talent of being able to quickly untangle a mess of hooks and tippet would lead me to where I am today, but it's the greatest life decision I've ever made, and I still smile every time a client raises that bird's nest with a confused look on their face.