In 2023, I’ve gone to Guatemala for sailfish, and I fished El Salto for bass.

Domestically, I’ve been to Alaska for trout, salmon, and halibut, to Table Rock for the bass fishing trifecta, and then to Charleston for redfish.

I recognize that comes off as a bit obnoxious and probably makes what I’m about to say a bit of a humblebrag. Despite all of those repeatable “trips of a lifetime,” my best day of fishing may have come last Friday, on a nondescript local lake, where I didn’t top the 4-pound mark.

What made it exceptional wasn’t that they ate a Whopper Plopper all day, although that certainly helped. It wasn’t that the lake was more or less empty, especially after an hour-long rainstorm pushed through around 1 o’clock. Instead, it was the fact that after five or six weeks of a lot of stress, much but not all of it work-related, I had a day on the water to myself. Except for calling my wife mid-day to check up on her, I didn’t speak to anyone until I got back in the vehicle to head home in the late afternoon. Wait, I lied – I also talked to the woman at the convenience store who made my breakfast sandwich.

At 53 years old, with a full travel schedule, and more work than I’d like (although I admit that I take it on voluntarily), it doesn’t really make sense for me to have a relatively new bass boat anymore. I only use it 25-30 days a year. It would be cheaper, and far more hassle-free, to just hire a guide any time I wanted to go. He’d probably be on more fish, I wouldn’t have to deal with broken stuff, and at the end of the day, I’d just go home and stow my handful of rods and be done with my tasks. 

For once, no one called with a faux emergency, I still had Saturday and Sunday to get my other tasks done, and there were not only no other voices around me, but none screaming in my head that this wasn’t what I should be doing. Again, in purely economic terms having a bass boat makes no sense for me, but if I can get three or four days like that per year, it more than pays for itself.

The year’s not over, and there’s lots of water to cover, so of course there’s a chance I’ll have an even better day, but if I don’t I can live with that, too.