employing your vision

It is always the same when I close my eyes:

The popper bounces along.

chug.

The sun is bright in the southern sky and I can feel my skin burning an outline around my sunglasses. The line feels thick and heavy, tacky between my fingers.

chug.

There should be fish here. There should be fish everywhere and maybe I have caught a few but maybe I have just arrived. I can't be sure.

chug.

I don't hear wind, breathing, water, birds. All is silent. There is no soundtrack, no special effects, no foley.

chug.

Sometimes I manifest a take, a splash, a tight line that sends little diamond sparkles when it stretches taught away from the surface.

Other times I don't and the popper just floats, over and over through the same ripples and the same dancing sunlight through the same three of four seconds of river. Three or four seconds is not a lot of river when you think about it. It would be asking quite a bit for a willing fish to reside in those seconds. But all it takes is one. One second of flowing water to make a difference. Sometimes you wait days, months, years for that one second.

Sometimes it never comes. But on the good days it does.

chug.