“give a man a fish…

…and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Now that’s an awesome proverb.

Whoever came up with it gets like 50 gold stars!

A couple of weeks ago, Mr. B and we managed to sneak away for an afternoon and headed down south to Eleven Mile Canyon in Colorado Springs to do a little flyfishing. Did you know that we fly fished? Yep, yep. We first learned how to fly fish three years ago through a class put on by a local fly shop here in Denver. We knew nothing about fly fishing. Zilch. Nada. The only fishing yours truly had ever attempted was the kind where you sit in a lawn chair with a pole in thewater while you sip beer or take a nap and get sunburn. We believe they call itpond fishing? Needless to say we had a lot of work ahead of us. We had to learn how to put on waders, thread a rod, and tie knots. By the way, learning how to tie a knot is one the hardest freaking things on the planet to do because it requires patience, ofwhich we also have zilch and nada. (Unless it’s a chance to catch a glimpse of Ryan Gosling. For that, we will wait a century. Um, and if not Mr. Gosling himself, could we at least get a glimpse of something he’s touched or lookedat? Pretty please?) Where was we? Oh yes. Knots. Besides learning how to tie microscopic knots, you must master the art of casting. …Do wha? All we're going to say is that there are two kindsof basic casts – 1) a roll cast, and 2) over the head. And yes, they were both totally over our head when we started. Casting gets pretty technical and takes alot of practice. (For the record, if there was a tree catching cast, we would have won first place immediately.)

Anyways, given all that information, you can see why a lot of people wouldn’t want to participate in the sport. And you’re probably wondering, why on earth we would even want to subject myself to such insanity? But we can honestly say,when you’re standing in the middle of a stream and all that surrounds you are giant, green pine trees and the clear, blue sky, you find peace. Nature has a funny way of reeling us back in and reminding us of the simple pleasures in life. That’s why we haven’t quit. Although, we can’t lie. We almost did. We mentioned earlier that we have been fly fishing for over three years. Do you know how manyfish we caught in that time? Z-E-R-O. Oh, we know, it’s major crazy town. That’s like playing basketball for years and never scoring a single basket. Why keep playing? Well, we were beginning to think the only way we would be a part of the fly fishing community was to take a “supportive” role. (read: sitting on the bank soaking up rays of sun while telling Mr. B he was doing great).

But everything changed one Saturday afternoon. We didn’t hit the stream until well after lunch because we're still slower than molasses at tying knots. Thankfully, Mr. B has the hands of a surgeon and was able to tie the knots quickly. He also has the patience we don’t have – remember, marry people who have good traits that you don’t have! As soon as we stepped into the stream, what seemed like a dozen trout came swimming up to our ankles. We couldn’t believe. The fish down the stream were jumping in the air trying to eat anything and everything. We told myself, today is going to be the day. We threw our line out and immediately got a strike, but nothing hooked. This went on for another hour or so, and once again we started to feel deflated. We eventually lost our fly on our line, so we stomped over to where Mr. B was fishing and switched rods with him so he could fix ours (Isn’t that a great system?).

We waddled back to our fishing spot, threw an over-the-head cast, and with in two seconds we were screaming at the top of our lungs, “FISH! FISH! Mr. B, FISH! MOVE YOUR ASS AND GET A NET!!!” we couldn’t believe it. We kept reeling the line, still yelling our head off. Clearly Mr. B thought we were going to loose it (and the fish). But we didn’t. Mr. B managed to make it over just in the nick of time and helped us put the fish in the net. We had him take the hook out of the mouth and make sure poor Mr. Fishy wasn’t hurt. (By the way, isn’t it hilarious and ironic that people do this? We tryreally hard to hook a fish, and then once we do, we’re like, we're so sorry we hooked you! We hope you’re not hurt!) Have you ever touched a fish? Gross-slippery-city, folks. We thought we were gonna throw up – this guy smelled horrible and was extra slimy. Mr. B told us to pose with Mr. Fishy, and we were hesitant at first, but we knew we had to in order to officially be a part of the fly fishing club. We definitely had a Kung Fu grip on the poor scaly guy, but we were so excited we didn’t care. We had finally caught a fish – a 14-inch rainbow trout, to be exact. After we took thepicture, we gently placed the fish back into the stream. We've never been more proud of myself. It may be another three years before we catch another one, but that moment will live with us forever. Of course, we recommend fly fishing to anyone who’s considering it. But, we also recommend anything that brings you back to nature for a day, or that helps you spend good, quality time with your sweetheart. And if you’ve been working on somethingfor three years with no success, and you’re thinking about giving up, we certainly recommend that you keep on fishin’.