Occasionally I’m asked what it’s like to run a business where a long-time passion and work intersect. “Do you get tired of fishing?”, they ask. No, I don’t. I love fishing now as much or more as I did 17 years ago when I caught the bug. But sometimes it feels different.
It’s not that I get tired of fishing or like it less, but there is a difference between fishing for sake of creating content, teaching others or taking people fishing and fishing for sake of fishing.

In the last month and half I haven’t just gone fishing for sake of fishing. I fished in Japan a few times, but that was either done for a TV show there or content creation. Then I fished a couple of times and went fishing with folks at the Tenkara Summit. Was it any less fun to go fishing those times? No, it was still a blast. But it was different.

Yesterday morning my neighbor Allen, my wife, a friend of ours and one new friend met up in my place to go fishing a creek 10 minutes from home. We had some coffee, I cut a couple of slices of the bread I had just baked and we packed tightly in my car. The new friend was also new to tenkara, but after giving him the basic instructions for 10 minutes and him picking it up quickly, we were all on our own, convening on occasion, but primarily just fishing.

Maybe there wasn’t a big difference between this and other fishing days. I still taught someone, I still changed flies for my wife, I still captured images and now decided to write about it. It was still a lot of fun. But, the air felt different. Autumn is here 100% now. The light was different, with the sun lower in the South. The air felt crisper. More leaves floated by in the creek. Somehow, yesterday just felt like fishing for fishing sake.