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Bobber,
I too long for the days of discovery when everything I learned opened new doors and being a sponge to absorb everything “striper”. When my successes were savored and my defeats were crushing. A time when I spent all hours either fishing, thinking about fishing, reading about fishing, or setting the hook in my dreams. I sometimes see myself in the new generation of surf “hungries”. To be sure things have changed but this is after all the information age, it’s just how things are now. These times will be their “old days” eventually. But I still rekindle the spark occasionally, on certain nights it may be the aroma of the salt air, or the sound of the cobble receding after a wave. Sometimes it’s a solid take of a good fish that would have had my knees shaking 30 years ago but now there is no panic, if I lose, I lose. I suggest you look at other types of fishing where the learning process starts again. I did this two May’s ago in Key West. Standing on a bridge platform after dark, casting for the possibility of my largest fish, and then after an hour, hooking up to a freight train that made my past stripers seem tame. In a moment of time the sound of a refrigerator hitting the water, and a short time later my reel emptied of line. And once again I was transformed back to my youth, heart beating fast, knees weakened, and hands shaking as I attempted to thread a new spool of line through the guides. The mystery can still happen.
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