I’ve been trying to write this for almost six (6) months.
Back in April and May, I'd just crossed from “I don’t know about writing a newsletter” to “well, okay, maybe.” Then Memorial Day weekend happened, and I was standing on a rock in a creek right outside the house we'd rented outside of Boone, NC, and I caught my first real fish.
I came home thinking: I must write about this. This would be a great newsletter article.
Now, it’s October. And I still can’t stop thinking about the fish.
The morning
This was maybe the fifth time I'd held a fishing rod in my entire life. The previous times had been mostly social affairs — standing around with friends, rod in one hand, sometimes a beverage in the other, talking about all sorts of things while occasionally remembering to check if anything had happened with the line. Some nibbles, I'd hear the line pull, but I never caught anything. And no one I was ever with caught anything. I thought this was how fishing went.
That morning was cold enough for a light puffy jacket — though it was late May — and I was fishing with my friend Eldon and his young son in a medium-sized creek that ran right past the house we were sharing with three (3) other families. No waders, no fancy fly fishing gear — just me standing on a rock above the water with a worm (bought from a cooler at the nearby Walmart) on a hook, casting into pools I could see the bottom of.
I mention worms because one of the other dads was into fly fishing. Had all the gear. And he got made fun of that trip. Quite a bit. Which goes back to the first time I met Eldon. When I found out he fished, I asked, "Oh, do you fly fish?" He replied back in a deadpan, "No. I like to catch fish."
So when the line went tight, Eldon appeared at my elbow, coaching me through it. The pole was bending so much I thought it would snap. When we finally got the fish close enough to see, I was genuinely surprised at the size. About a foot long. In a creek I could practically jump across, right outside a house full of families on vacation.
The fish
We reeled it in and Eldon netted it quickly, cut the line and pulled the hook out with the efficiency of someone who’d done this a million times. “Hold it like this,” he said. “Get your finger under the gill. Support it.”
The trout felt solid yet completely alien, wiggling hard. It was maybe 11 inches/28 cm long, with spots along its flank. “Okay, bring it up so I can take a picture,” Eldon said. “Quick. Give me your phone.”
I held it up. The fish seemed to be getting heavier. Eldon snapped the photo. The whole thing took maybe ten (10) seconds. The trout was moving a lot less now.
“Now get it back in the water. Hold it facing upstream.”
About the spot where I knelt on the rocks, holding a trout in icy water, waiting to feel it come back to life.
I knelt down and lowered my hands back into the creek. The water was icy cold. The current stronger than I expected. The trout’s body was limp in my hands.
“Let the water flow over its gills” Eldon said. “Try to touch it as little as possible. Your hands — the bacteria and whatnot — are poison to it. Move it forward and back. Hold just the tail.”
I did as I was told. I held the trout’s tail with one hand like a flashlight, moving it side to side. I kept my left hand underneath but away from the fish, as though I was offering moral support. And I waited.
At first, nothing changed. My fingers and hands were tingling with the creeping numbness. I thought I saw the gills flutter but I wasn’t sure. I started to worry we’d done something wrong, that I’d kept the fish out too long, that this fish was going to die because I didn’t know what I was doing. It felt like forever.
And then I felt it. A slight tensing in the muscles — from nothing to rigid and waking up.
I could feel its tail flex against my palm. “You’ll know,” Eldon said. Once, then again, harder. I looked at him. He nodded. I loosened my grip and I let go
The trout hung there for a half-second, as if deciding whether to trust this status quo, this freedom in the same water. Then a flick of its tail. A thrash and it shot downstream into a deeper pool, disappearing so suddenly that I actually gasped.
After
“Pretty good size,” Eldon said.
“We just let it go,” I said.
“Yeah, man. We don’t keep what we catch out here. We don’t need it. The planet needs that fish more than we do.”
Something else to consider
"In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks."
I went out that morning looking to spend time with friends, maybe catch something if I got lucky. What I got was a trout coming back to life in my hands. The cold water soaking through my jacket sleeves. The muscle movement returning to something I thought might die. The understanding that there's a whole world just under the surface of the water.
Muir was right. You don't get what you're looking for. You get what you pay attention to.
That trout was there all along, I just had to pay attention. What about your customers? Let's get clear on who you're serving and what they're trying to accomplish
I stayed kneeling there for a few moments, hands still in the water, watching the spot where the trout had vanished. The sleeves of my jacket were completely soaked through. My hands were numb. It’d take me about an hour to warm them up fully. And I couldn’t believe that that trout — something so large and alive — was in a creek right outside a rental house, and I would have never known if I had hung back for another cup of coffee.
That fish is still out there, I hope.
Want to share your own moment of discovery? Hit reply and tell me about a time something made you stop and actually pay attention. I read every response.
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Until next time,
Skipper Chong Warson
Making product strategy and design work more human — and impactful