Ride on Time

By Dan Trotter on September 1, 2018 in Other

“How’s the enemy?” I reflect on them saying. It was an unusual way to ask about the time, I always thought. That was, until life got so busy that I didn’t have the time to do all the things I love to do, like going fishing or just lying in the sun, reading a book and staring up into the cloudless blue sky, contemplating what forever and eternity actually means.

It seems that today everyone around us is pressed for time – time to sleep, time to spend time with friends and loved ones, time to cook, or time to simply browse the paper.

Where has it all gone, I often wonder? The answer it seems is that it has disappeared into the very items that were supposed to save us time – technology, travelling in cars or on public transport, making enough money to relax and make the most out of life.

Was life simpler before all of these mod cons arrested control of our lives? The academics and researchers who ponder these questions generally agree that life was simpler and the pre-industrialised civilisations had more time for all the things we often miss out on, like community, relationships, sleeping and, well, just being.

Were these people happier? That’s a tougher question to answer.

Fishing is the pause that provides many of us with a break from the rush of life that occupies our time, so I guess I need to take a leaf out of my own book and make time to just be.

September is a tricky month for fishing out of Sydney. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that you need to be as precise as possible and make the most out of the time you find to wet a line – precise on the locations, the timing of the tides and the offering you make to tempt a fish to bite.

It’s a great month to journey further afield, up or down the coast or overseas to international waters – perhaps a trip to California to chase trout or to one of the Pacific Island nations to fish for tropical species?

This year I’m fortunate to be go- ing to California to fish the rivers that flow west from the Sierra Nevada mountain range for a swag of trout species. It’s a solo mission to take the time to get back to nature and spend days quietly focused on a single fish in the hope that it may rise and take the fly I’ve selected as an offering. Fingers crossed a few take up the offer and deliver me to fishing nirvana, but even if they don’t it will be great to forget about the enemy, at least for a while.

Closer to home, there’s enough to keep the patient angler interested, like whiting off the beach
or Australian salmon off the rocks or from the boat. It’s also a good month to find and fish below
the bait balls rounded up by the striped tuna. Experience shows both snapper and trevally know this, which offers a unique opportunity for the precise and switched on fisho.

Tight lines to you all and please do a fish dance for me. I’ll bring a story or two back and hopefully a dozen or so photos to share.