For me, fun comes first. In fact, there’s a garage full of fun potential – skis, golf clubs, hiking and camping gear, bikes, backpacks, SCUBA stuff, Frisbees and sports equipment galore, film and photography toys, you name it. The list goes on and on. It all collects a little dust here and there, as I only have so much time to play, but I try to maintain at least an advanced beginner status in everything and thus feel the joys of a good investment and rewards of good use. One should, however, always broaden one’s fun horizons.
So, impulse purchases to me, are when I see that piece of sweet gear that just cries out my name and promises of an even sweeter life. This plan works out neatly most of the time, but the bummer is, I like nice things. Not the glitzy absurdly styled stuff with all the temperature-telling bells and GPS-locatering whistles, but when I shop for gear, I look for high function, exceptional quality, and tough-as-nails durability at a respectable price. Unfortunately, dreaming and dabbling into new and exciting funs and hobbies can get expensive.
The latest was flyfishing. Sometimes it gets ridiculously expensive.
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Sure, you can buy a rod and reel down at your local Kmart that casts (and catches) about as well as 100 feet of monofilament tied to a Coke can. Sure, you’ll snag a sucker or two and not go hungry, and sure, it’s a good way to start out in the sport. But I know how to roll cast and make a few good moves on the easier fish. In fact, I’m not too bad at all for a motivated beginner and best yet, in my mind I could see the canvas waiting to be painted.
Lees Ferry, with it’s crimson cliffs rising to grand scale hundreds of feet around and above my microscopic speck of self, California condors circling overhead, my feet happily dunked in the chilly waters of the Colorado River below Parker Dam, and fat cutthroats jumping and dancing to all’s delight in a direct line from creel to skillet to belly. I was done plunking. I wanted to paint Lees Ferry wooly booger lipstick on hefty rainbow trout. I wanted to make my midges sing. Lees Ferry. The words alone even possess their own haunting ring. I had seen pictures, glorious pictures, but I told myself I wasn’t going until I was good enough and using good gear. Lees Ferry, afterall, is world-class water.
A quick perusal of the yellow pages put me on to a half dozen specialty fly shops within about fiftenn miles. I was in the market for a good rod, reel, lines and leaders, flies, fly boxes, waders, and maybe even a smart hat and a cool vest with plenty of pockets if I had enough left over. My plan was to listen intently to the suggestions of the salesperson and then stay down towards the reasonable end of the good stuff.
Five minutes in store number one, and well, if you haven’t been to a fly fishing shop recently, believe me, you better be carrying the super-platinum credit card and wearing ruby slippers. A sweet flyfishing rig is out-of-this-world expensive. I had budgeted $500, more than a fair amount of extra work to pay off, but it would be paid by summer and just think how much I’d appreciate it then when I could escape the Phoenix heat! Moreover, getting it now would give me some time to practice. Turned out, five bills would hardly be a dent in the total damage.
Still, I spent a couple hours in three different shops to at least get pointed in the right direction, and I felt worse finally walking out of the third one after making no purchases at any. All the fly shop folks I met were about as friendly and nice as people get, even if the worst day of fishing beats the best day of working. These guys obviously get a lot of good time on the water.
I told them of my roll casting daydreams, and with appreciative ahhs and knowing nods, they explained exactly why I needed the gear displayed so seductively just beyond my bucks. I couldn’t buy I decided as I left the store and I felt bad, so in desperation, I headed to the great slayer of small retailers, the Internet. Certainly, I could find my desired quality in my desired price range. I had to swallow my guilt – I wanted to go fishing!
I found some cheaper prices, but not that much cheaper. Maybe flyfishing was just not in the cards right now. Although I even thought briefly about spending a healthy bit more than budgeted, I reckoned that all the resultant toil would defeat the greater purpose of maximum fun by minimizing my fun time. It looked like singing and painting and all these other artistic endeavors I felt destined to would be forever lost to the mere mortality of my meager finances.
Nearly three months went by, a couple hours here and there spent browsing cyber warehouses for a great deal, but nothing. I cried inside every time as I tortured myself with colorful books and videos about Lees Ferry, and my clunker Kmart rod casts in local puddles never quite felt right. My addiction was coming to a head; I was down and confused and lost, even ready to call it quits, when I realized I had hit rock bottom.
After one particularly long day of work, tired but dedicated, I trudged to the gym. As much as I try to get out to hike, play sports, toss around a Frisbee, or even just go for a nice long walk, sweating for a half hour on the bike, throwing around a few piles of weights, and a dozen laps up and down the pool does the fitness trick quick and tidy.
My plan that day was to work out and then go watch a slide show by a local flyfisherman who had spent a month perfecting his trouting techniques in Tierra del Fuego, but it’s funny how life works out. Halfway through my headphone-blasting half-hour pedal to nowhere, I came across an article in Men’s Journal. Apparently, another fun-loving brethren stumbled upon the same drug-like addiction and dilemma concerning the art of financially finagling flyfishing.
Pedaling furiously as if I’d crank out the full thirty minutes faster, I read the article through twice more, then promised the rest of the workout to tomorrow and raced home. Almost forgetting my keys in the door, I bee-lined to the computer, and with credit card hot in hand, fired my mouse button with a machine-gun fierceness. In my mega-money-saving, dream-fulfillment daze, I called my brother and told him the good news. I was going to build my own fly rod!
We talked for a little too long and before I knew it, the clock announced I had missed the slide show’s start. But that night, I slept deep and easy with a calm soundness I had not felt since before the malady’s madness and melancholy had set in. Three days later, the doorbell rang. My package full of future flyfishing fun had arrived.
