Salomone: Time to reflect and look ahead
Let the fishing memories from the last year spur you on to make angling plans — right now — for the next
Michael Salomone/Courtesy photo
Fly fishing holds anglers in a different perspective. So many of our memories revolve around a common activity. As the calendar year crawls toward new numbers, fly fishers should assess their angling activity from the recent past. The cold, snow-crusted days are a good time to reflect on your year and look ahead.
The end of the year gives anglers time to assess the past 12 months and embrace the coming year. Plan for the fishing you will be taking in the new year. Often during the frigid months here in Colorado — and across the United States — thoughts of warm weather adventures take shape. It seems that everyone, no matter what your location, dreams of saltwater and sand during the winter.
But trips don’t just take form from thoughts. They take action and premeditation to come to fruition.
Make reservations and schedule air travel now as an incentive for months down the road. Rest assured: memories made during a warm weather trip you plan now will be the reflections you treasure next winter. Fly-fishing trips do not need to only revolve around destinations, but could be focused on building and broadening skills instead.
Long ago, fly anglers voluntarily gave up easier paths to fishing success. Fly fishing is difficult, with a lifelong learning curve and a breadth of unfathomable description. Experts — true masters in our game — are humble and always seek out more information to learn. Whether it is in fly tying, casting or entomology, fly fishing holds massive attraction for the mental factor alone.
Support Local Journalism
A guided fly fishing trip can be the learning time you need to refine skills or practice new tactics. A fly fishing school, such as the School of Trout, directed by Todd Tanner, elevates a fly angler’s intelligence. Whatever the venue, plan on taking time to learn something new about fly fishing, whether through a fly shop like Vail Valley Anglers or someplace else. You deserve it.
Revel in the angling opportunities you took. When I look back at the past 12 months, there are some new experiences to journal but there are a lot of new faces with which I shared time fishing. Those people layer importance and possess meaning in my fly fishing.
Fly fishing with brothers, nephews and best friends builds permanence in memory that time can’t erase. Fishing also builds bonds between complete strangers and distant acquaintances. Angling provides the foundation for a common language capable of immediately changing focus and tone between strangers. Some of those strangers have become treasured friends.
I often ask myself, ‘Will I remember a random Friday on the job 20 years from now? Or will the permanence burnt into my psyche from the memory of a mountain stream where cutthroat trout ate dry flies under a Colorado blue sky while fishing beside my brother linger longer?’
I think most of my readers will know the answer to my question. Give yourself permission to take time in 2025 to construct memories on the water rather than behind window blinds.
Fly fishing this past year laid the foundation for providing experiences for strangers under the moniker of Giving Back Outdoors, a veteran’s association that extends opportunities for individuals and family members to experience fly fishing in Colorado. Fly fishing with the veterans and their family members placed more meaning on where we were and what we were doing than the actual catching that was recorded in photos. Think about dedicating time to such an organization. Plan ahead to volunteer and watch what comes up in your memories the next time you reflect.
We need more anglers to devote time to teaching kids to fish. Kids need opportunities to learn the skills so many of us take for granted. The time you plan to invest helping kids during the coming year will make you beam with pride when you encounter the same young angler out on the river years from now.
When I reflect on the past year, memories from the top of the Rockies to the endless sea-of-grass called the Everglades wash over me. People and places, old friends and family, all joined together by a simple act of fishing.
Take time to reflect on your angling year and plan ahead. Fly fishing is the catalyst for our experiences past and future. See you on the river in 2025.
Michael Salomone moved to the Eagle River valley in 1992. He began guiding fly-fishing professionally in 2002. His freelance writing has been published in magazines and websites including, Southwest Fly Fishing, Fly Rod & Reel, Eastern Fly Fishing, On the Fly, FlyLords, the Pointing Dog Journal, Upland Almanac, the Echo website, Vail Valley Anglers and more. He lives on the bank of the Eagle River with his wife, Lori; two daughters, Emily and Ella; and a brace of yellow Labrador retrievers.
