Perspective. Nothing opens the aperture of life better than time away from your daily routine. Vacations are an intermission between acts, providing time to stretch your legs, consider what you’ve seen and prepare for what’s to come.

This past week in saltwater provided that intermission and granted me perspective at just the right time.

When every hour is consumed with duty, your field of view narrows because there’s no time to see what’s around. Goal-driven days, weeks and months, without pause, force you into a constricted focus, a tapered view, until you cannot grasp what is beyond the periphery of those goals. You might see most of it, but you can’t experience it, because there’s simply no time to spare. You don’t have the energy or the space to grab hold of what surrounds you and give it a good look. So half of life passes by on the edges, until you know what you’re missing but can’t take your foot off the gas long enough to meet it outside of your own lane.

This Troutbitten website has served as a journal for me at times and as a fishing log at others. In truth, much of it has been intertwined.

I found fishing early on, and it seems that all my life I’ve gone fishing to recapture the spirit of living, to be reminded of what I’m missing, to breathe deep, tune in and walk away from everything for a while. Fishing has been my way to broaden that field of vision again — that breadth of experience. To open up to everything around me while pursuing a single fish in a narrow lane.

It’s enlightening to look back through the stories I’ve written here on family and fishing. So much has changed in my life, in this business, with my boys and in the ways that I fish. And it’s good to reflect a bit, to be thankful for the progress and proud of the achievements. Because “life moves pretty fast, and if you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller.

When Troutbitten became my career, the simple act of fishing grew more complicated. It tied itself to work, until the stories and words, the photos, videos and audio files were stirred into the same pot as invoices and emails.

These saltwater trips — family vacations with a healthy dose of fishing the surf and stalking fluke with bucktails and spinning rods — have energized my pure delight of fishing. Six years ago, I knew nothing. But after these daily dawn and dusk shifts beside an eastern ocean — and a few under the headlamp — I understand enough to trust myself. I’ve reached the point where I know when I’ve fished it well and I can move on. I’ve assimilated the sources, put tactics to the test and have emerged with a guiding light down my own path.

I love the long game — always have. And for right now, in this brief bit of time, I know what I’m working on — in life, in saltwater and in the Pennsylvania woods.

Fish hard, friends.

READ: Troutbitten | A Fish Out of Freshwater
READ: Troutbitten | Surf and Salt — LBI 2019
READ: Troutbitten | Lessons From the Salt — Strike Zone, Sensitivity and Persistence

** NOTE ** If you are an LBI regular or a NJ surf fisher, please get in touch. The salt is a mystery to me, and I’ll take all the guidance I can get.

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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com