Dream Fishing Destination - How to decide?

Note: This blog entry is my submission for the Red Tuna Shirt Club and Outdoor Blogger Network Writing Contest.

I was presented with the question “what would be your dream fishing destination?” and it took me back a little.  I mostly hunt, so I have my dream hunts on paper.  But my dream fishing destination, that had me search my thought database.

The nice thing about fishing is it can be what you want it to be.  If my mood strikes, there is nothing like popping the water with a fly in a cold mountain stream.  Then again, a beetle spin or mister twister worm in a farm pond or small lake pulling in largemouth, crappie, and bream, the action is all but guaranteed.  Pier fishing on the coast bringing in croaker and spot with the occasional flounder and blue; well that is a summer ritual at least once each year.

Read More Fishing Memories

But the one destination may not be the one destination.  I like the peaceful rap of the running water over the rocks in the mountains.  However, if I was there all the time, then that farm pond may be what ignites the memories that bring the solitude to an aging soul.

As far as my dream hunts go, there are two that may not be hunts at all, or they may epitomize what a hunt actually is.  I would love to hit the Trinity River in Texas with a bowfishing rig.  A huge alligator gar wading in the shallow turn of a muddy river, while I stalk the creature on the front end of a boat, bow, arrow, and line in hand.  What a rush it would be to have a 6 or 7 foot prehistoric monster on the barb of a bone and scale splitting tip.

Read about North Carolina's River Monster



(AP Photo/Illinois River Biological Station)



Then again, a weekend excursion up the Illinois to witness the flying curtains of carp, desperately trying to fling a shaft through a shiny alien fish all the while dodging the ones setting their flights toward you would be an adventure to behold.  All I can see there are laughter, misses, and an occasional exuberation when the arrow actually does impale a fish out of water.

So you see, fishing can take different forms and therefore can mean so many different things, that one destination may not be able to fulfill your actual dreams.

Bill Howard writes a weekly outdoors column for the Wilson Times and Yancey County News and the bowhunting blog site GiveEmTheShaft.com. He is a Hunter Education and International Bowhunter Education instructor, lifetime member of the North Carolina Bowhunters Association, Bowhunter Certification Referral Service Chairman, member and official measurer of Pope and Young, and a regular contributor to North Carolina Bowhunter Magazine.