Inspired angling...

Many have already asked about shaman angling. Put simply it is fishing with original wisdom. Put simply another way it is inspired angling. Inspired put simply is "in spirit". In more depth, it involves listening to the natural and to the inner voices that guide us all, if we will hear them. It's difficult to put in words, difficult to teach, learned mostly through intense first hand experience and overlooked by many. The shaman angler uses expectation and confidence  more than fur and feather to entice the fish. Fish-less outings are not distressing to the shaman piscator. He nevertheless returns with the aim of his quest, a commune with the water, its abode and denizens, but on the fish-less occasion with the added knowledge of what did not produce the preferred result... a jerk on both ends of the string. Shaman angler success may seem magical to some observers but it is simply the consequence of listening and learning. I am not yet a shaman angler but someday hope to be.

Water...

What is it about water? If you've taken a peek at my profile you probably noticed water has a significant influence on my priorities. Oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, or clouds, no matter the form it takes it's pretty neat stuff. Water has fascinated me since childhood. Clouds that floated through the firmament like feathers could hold life sustaining water by the hundreds, maybe thousands, of gallons or harbor the dark destruction of lightning and storms. Rivers and lakes were filled with their own intrigue and there was no greater mystery than what was around the next bend in a river. That mystery still tugs at me each time I am on a river today. One of my favorite dialogues on the significance of water was penned in 1653 by a gentleman named Izaak Walton in a book titled The Compleat Angler which would become the third most re-printed book in the English language....










"The water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the element upon which the spirit of God did first move, the element which God commanded to bring forth living creatures abundantly; and without which, those that inhabit the land, even all creatures that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putrefaction.

Moses, the great lawgiver and chief philosopher, skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was called the friend of God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, names this element first in the creation: this is the element upon which the spirit of God did first move, and is the chief ingredient in the creation: many philosophers have made it to comprehend all the other elements, and most allow it the chiefest in the mixtion of all living creatures."