Recently I have been keeping a stream-side fishing journal where during, or after a fishing trip I can jot down notes about my fishing trips, success and failures. This is the second attempt I have made at such a journal, the first collapsing in failure when I left it at the bottom of my fishing bag and forgot it for several months. This time I have been having more success (i.e. fun) with it, I think because I have expanded the scope from a simple record of sizes and species of fish caught to a more holistic journal where in I record the location, my fishing buddies, what flies I used, and sometimes maps or diagrams of rivers and pools that I want to remember.

This satisfies two urges toward the "traditional" and "gentlemanly" that I often feel. On the one hand the journal feels like a Victorian gentleman's field notebook, which he might use to collect scientific observations when on an outing in the great outdoors. While catch and release fishing would have been a strange concept to the Victorian fly fisher, I think that the reverence and interest with which we observe and appreciate our "quarry" would have been immediately recognized by a Victorian collector of butterflies or by by a naturalist such as John Muir in his cataloging of western plants or Charles Darwin in his recording of the wildlife of the Galapagos. The Victorians were the one who taught us to add a rational frame of organization to the natural world, and they did this through careful note-taking in the field. While my notations are not worthy of  comparison with Darwin or Muir, I like to think that I stand in the footsteps of those note takers.

The second great urge is toward the literary and self reflective (and self descriptive). I like the idea of a document wherein my feelings and experiences are cataloged, and where I can look back and remember who I was and what I was doing at any one moment. In this way I feel connected to great diarists such as Samuel Pepys and Thomas Merton. Again, not to compare myself to them, but to take inspiration from them.

There is of course a very practical fishing related reason to keep a fishing journal. By acquiring information of what techniques I use, as well as where an when they were successful, I can contribute to my own growth as an angler, and maybe even catch more fish.

By the way, if you want to keep a notebook of any kind for any reason, I highly suggest you get a pack of Field Notes notebooks, not just for the fantastic retro-agriculture notebook look, but because they are tough, well made, and the paper is of a great quality for the price)

Happy Notetaking

--Posted by Eben