On the Spirituality of streams and fish.

So today i put my line in the water for Erie steelhead for the first time in a year. I only caught one fish, decent sized, but not amazing and this was still one of the best days of my life. I had forgotten, or at least allowed to fade in my mind, the joy of a trout that one cannot fit ones hand around. At the end of any succesful battle of man versus fish comes the inevitable decision of consumption versus conservation. I prefer to think of it as consumption versus fairness. The fish gives me only its best effort no matter how cruelly I may have deceived it. There is nothing more beautiful to me than holding an exhausted fish, just slightly submerged in the recovery position, nose pointed upstream to run water over its gills and provide it with oxygen, thrust it upstream in the water two or three times, then release it and feel its muscles twitch driving it out into the stream again, essentially no different than when I found it. I love fish better than most people. My best for their best, simplicity, honor, honesty. No lies, no bullshit. Man, fish, stream.