TIM BELFORD

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

It's that time of year.

I spent the last couple of days cleaning my fishing gear.

Over the years, like all fishermen, I've managed to collect enough odds and ends to equip one of captain highliners trawlers.

I'm not too sure why.

I don't catch that many fish. I don't even want to catch that many fish.

I just like fishing.

You see, whereas a golfer is unhappy when the putt doesn't fall into the hole and a ball player experiences a sort of sportsman's existential angst when he strikes out, fishermen can come home quite happy with an empty creel.

In the first place, I have a great deal of respect for the fish in question.

After all, he, or she, has to be considerably smarter than the fisherman in the first place.

On our side, we've got the latest in invisible monofilament line, computer generated lures, depth sounders, fish locating sonars, aromatic oils designed to send our scaled friends into a feeding frenzy, and the rest of modern science.

Pitted against this the fish has nothing more than common sense. Or the fish equivalent.

It should be a no brainer.

As a matter of fact, fish, all fish, should have gone beyond the endangered species category to extinct years ago.

That they haven't is a testimony to their smarts and the fisherman's willingness to accept defeat.

To explain why anyone would put up with the cold, ravenous black flies with the jaws of a pit bull, rain, leaky boats, and rising at dawn to be bested by something ten levels below him on the evolutionary stepladder would take an entire volume or, at the least, a good freudian analyst.

I prefer to accept it for what it is. One of those inexplicable facts of life.

Sort of like brussel sprouts or velour.

It just is.

So i'll head out again. Fly rod in hand. To practice the anglers art.

And if you think it's a waste of time, well, as Henry David Thoreau said, "time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."