Steelhead Withdrawl...

Its been over two weeks now since my last steelhead and I am starting to feel the withdrawl symptoms...Its an addiction..to say the least, its one of the few things in life that can shut the little voice inside my head up...Its a high, not always a consistent one but its a high...sure its not all butterflies and fairy's when I am on the river....I do get pissed off while I'm fishing, but its the kind of anger that makes you work harder, not the kind that makes you feel hopelessly stuck with time to kill, I guess that's the withdrawl...the feeling of "What the fuck am I doing..." or just waking up with no drive because you know that you cant get to the river that day and even if you could, the chances of running into a fish are slim (at least where I am at the moment). I hate the idea of wasted time and in an effort to build upon my skills as an angler every day in some way, shape or form, with that being said- my recent days have been spent in preparation for my trip to Oregon...and when I break it down in my head (the- what will limit my experience that I have control over at this moment..)I think of presentation and what goes hand in hand with presentation...Casting... The cast is one of the few things you have control over when it comes to fishing...sure bad casts catch fish but so do good casts, You tell me...what feels better..a big loop less pile of line flying through the air to coil on the surface or a precisely timed cast that can send you deep into your running line..so in an effort to battle my withdrawl and steelhead depression I've been spending hours of casting practice on a local lake...perfection is my goal and with that in mind its all hard work and every cast that does no straighten out makes that little voice in my head get louder and louder...while every cast that feels right leaves me with the muted silence of perfection and the feeling of purpose...its a bi-polar experience to say the least..this whole casting practice thing...all I can hope is that is will fill in the gaps and hopefully all of the frustration and anger from a bad cast will motivate me to step back and slow down and examine what just happened....  to figure it all out... everything from the anchor, the tear to the stroke..its all equally important and with any weakness in the package you ll feel it...shit you ll see it laid out in front of you.

What have I learned from this withdrawl...what do we as anglers have control over in like (the young guys like me who have no family to take care of and no job to be at.)..we have the ability to move, to change our surroundings to better suit what we do..this is a big reason that I am moving at the end of the summer...so I can fish every day...and hopefully where I am going in OR is just that, sure I'm fine with spending many fish-less days challenged to the brink of insanity..that beats boredom and not fishing....Ive done my time working hard to get to my fish, now I'm ready to live on the river...to challenge myself in new ways..Ill drive...Ill hike..even if its for a small trout, as long as the possibility is out there..that's enough to keep the serotonin in my head flowing.