Checking it Twice

It’s that end-of-the-year time again. First, it’s the Christmas TV commercials that started in early November, if you didn’t notice (thanks, Japanese car company). Then it’s lists, lists, lists, as the parade of seemingly obligatory Top/Best Of lists proliferates ad nauseam. Top TV Shows of 2025, 100 Notable Books, Best Movies, Best Albums, Best Feel-Good Podcasts (hang on… are there “Feel-Bad” podcasts being produced…?). And then there are the bespoke “Year in Review” lists that prairie dog up into my social media feed. Apparently, a popular music streaming service has been tracking every interaction it has with some of my friends <shudder>.

Years ago, there was a meme I liked that circulated online, featuring a list of “Things I Hate” scrawled on a bathroom wall. I’ll lean on AI here to re-create it—and to add its own unintentionally funny AI-hallucinated twists that I’ll let you play “What’s wrong with this picture?” with, like in the old Highlights magazines in a pediatrician’s waiting room. Spoiler alert: There was nothing wrong with those pictures because they were all fantastical cartoons. So yeah, perfectly fine for a goat to be standing in a tree. They do yoga with humans now, too, you know.

The irony is that I actually like lists (so don’t look at numbers 2 and 3 in the meme list). And I guess I like irony, too (so don’t look at number 4 either).

I’m a chronic list-maker. I’m pretty sure that without my lists, those ducks I should be keeping in a row would wander astray and end up smoking menthol cigarettes in front of a 7-11 with those ne’er-do-well road-crossing chickens with doctorates in existential philosophy. Why, chickens? Why?

I leave lists for myself all around the house. On my tying bench is a list of flies to tie before my next trip. On my office desk is the high-traffic list that reminds me of near-term tasks, errands, and appointments for the week. That daily-reminder list lives next to a dusty list of long-ignored tasks, like “Gather donations” and “Organize the garage,” which are now more sardonic reminders or a prelude to me appearing on a very special episode of “Hoarders.”

The list that’s captured my attention at this end-of-the-year time, though, is my fishing log.

I’ve been keeping a personal fishing log for a good while now. It was inspired by a fancy leather-bound fishing diary that was part of a haul of fly-fishing gear a good friend’s father passed along to me for safekeeping. Unfortunately, that ancient book, made brittle from decades of storage in wildly varying humidity, is devoid of any entries. Really too bad, too, because I know my friend’s dad grew up fishing streams around where he grew up in Pittsburgh. I imagine he fished the 7-foot-6-inch Orvis bamboo 6-weight of his all-around New England after completing his medical residency in Boston. He definitely chased silver and chrome along the Oregon coast and on the Olympic Peninsula, where he put all the wear evident on the 10-weight Hardy bamboo salmon rods and reels that passed into my care. Judging by the condition of the gear, my friend’s dad fished hard. The Hardy reels all look like he threw them into a dried-out cement mixer after landing what had to be a monster fish.

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Instead of a crunchy leather-bound book, my fishing diary is a 21^st-century spreadsheet that lives in the cloud. In it, I track dates, locations, what I caught (if anything), what I caught it on (if I can remember), and any notes, such as weather, tides, fishing companions, and guide names (if any). The notes section from 2018 is my favorite part of the log because it memorializes when both my fishy daughter and my low-holing, rock-throwing son caught their first fish on the fly—my son’s was a 20-inch rainbow! As a reminder, that 20-inch fish is also the reason my son hates fly fishing—because, in his own words, “I find it really stressful catching big fish.”

I have notes registering when I started fly fishing the local surf, when and where I set new personal bests for size and species of various fish, and when my brother-in-law went pre-hypothermic while wearing inadequate rain gear while chasing browns with me in torrential May rain on the Delaware. The log notes also serve as a holiday gift guide now, as they proclaim, “Get yer brother-in-law bomb-proof rain gear!”

There’s some purely objective data captured in the log. Places fished (rivers, beaches, Belize…), species caught (trout, stripers, bonefish…), and tabulated days on the water, as well as days getting skunked. But those stark numbers also provide a benchmark I can hope to best in years to come—like, fewer skunked days, please.

And that’s where this fishing diary really reveals its worth. Not only does it provide a record of how not-very-good I can be at this awesome sport (I caught only nine fish on 19 outings in 2020; in my defense, maybe the fish went into lockdown, too?), but it also provides an accounting of how I might be becoming less not-very-good at our awesome sport now. I made eating turn into an alien abduction for 73 fish this year—so far.

My goal of “catching just one fish” every time I go fishing should show that I don’t measure my success in fly fishing by the number of fish I catch. I think my fishing log is more of a reflective gauge of my fly-fishing journey. Sort of like the wall maps people used to stick pushpins in to mark places they’ve been. 

Whatever “successes” I’m finding aren’t necessarily being quantified so much as they’re simply being chronicled. The fishing log captures my aspiration to become a casting instructor. It reflects my increased involvement with my local fly-fishing club in organizing group outings this year. Best of all, it reminds me of the good times I’ve had while fly fishing with friends. Maybe that’s the “success” I’m hoping to keep recorded.

So if you already keep a fishing diary, remember to take time to look at it every once in a while. Or if you’re now considering starting a fishing diary, don’t think you need to be detail-compulsive with it. Start by jotting down some notes if you had a good day or if your bushwhacky friend gave you a “Battle Hymn of the Republic” earworm after his first hook-up. For me, this exercise in reflection has helped me look beyond the bow of the drift boat and see more good runs ahead. This end-of-the-year time doesn’t have to be just about a Spotify Wrapped list or Happy Honda Days.