Fishing at 2 am last night I found myself not for the first time looking at the stars.
Night fishing always makes me more contemplative. Every splash and wave, every creak of the cast is louder and clearer and at times seemingly closer. The voices of the shore blend into a rhythm of sound and sensation that forces me to focus on the task at hand. Out of that comes the slotting into place of the cast, the safe footing, the minimal vision and the accentuated attention paid to what I am hearing and feeling.
I am in the place where anticipation always grows greater as the eastern horizon lightens.
Looking at the stars and stripping big flies slowly over a shallow drop-off, I am thinking, and also not for the first time, about my website. Probassfisher is rapidly approaching 3000 photographs, 1000 posts, this is post no. 970, the site represents five years of commitment to my experiences and some thoughts about bass angling in this country.
Now I find myself changing in relation to the fishing and what I post on Probassfisher and for how much longer do I want to attend to it. Its not just the fishing experiences I have had this week but those from late last year and early into this year too are making me think differently. There are always the usual questions about the quality of the writing, the structure, the posts, and the content. It’s too big to change it now and it is what it is. Somehow the benchmark of 1000 posts sounds like a stop, a milestone reached, a time for change for me at this time.
I love making the site and it makes it possible for me to do my job. Now I’m thinking, wanting to do something different something that is closer to the fishing. What that is I’m not quite sure yet, to be honest it’s probably a more ‘instinctive’ version of Probassfisher, but as I say I’m not quite sure, maybe its something like Thirtyards
Maybe it’s a different approach to the fishing and the business.
Spontaneity, desire, heightened anticipation, a headlong rush to a location in the wind and rain to fish, hoping that your instinct is right, not really caring if its not – call it what you might sometimes you just know you need to do it!
Jim Hendrick
