I was investing more belief and time in the ‘impossibility’ of getting it done. The further I stayed away and avoided the challenge of finding the new fishing the safer I felt. I did this because I began to convince myself, of the many crazy reasons I conjured up, that I didn’t need to stretch myself again, I wasn’t good enough to do it for myself, I was getting lazy. But there was something else too, something deeper that ran differently. I had thought I was avoiding the complications around trying to understand the fishing, getting there and back, finding accommodation, the costs, weather, tides, the usual challenges and countless, thankless hours of trying something new in a new place far from home, trying to figure it all out, fish, no fish, timings, patterns rhythms if any. This is a guide learning to do his job, normal stuff.

But that was only the first part – trying to achieve this and then to present it responsibly as a marketable option to the world on a fishing guide’s budget, invigorating the business differently, well that was just another challenge. The main difficulty was the scope of the learning challenge on a new coast combined with the business rebuild. I had to do this of course for myself. I had always worked out my own fishing, and always will. I thought – “To hell with it this!”

The simple fact was I was avoiding myself and the truth, and when both were confronted, I realised that I didn’t feel like doing it at all. It took me another incredibly difficult season (2012) to realise I was tired in my fishing soul, my spirit was lagging, all engaged energy gone. This was a new and emerging challenge for me.

Had I reached the beginning of the end of something or perhaps realised the possibility of something new?

These notes were written during and over the time when I had decided to close my business as a bass fishing guide. I realised the model I had was broken and I needed to stop. Out of all the time spent fishing for bass, weeks, months, years in fact, (especially the latter years of the guiding service), I had learned that within myself I was content to try and catch fish using the most difficult of methods – flyfishing at sea.

Out of that realisation of contentment and satisfaction THIRTYARDS is slowly emerging.