Brad stood tall beside the dugout fence, his long arms outstretched and his cap tilted upward.

“Hey! Everybody come here.” Brad fist bumped each kid in our group of dusty, fourteen-year-old baseball players as they jogged off the field and gathered around him in a circle. They’d just turned a double play to end the inning and keep the ballgame within reach, now going into the bottom of the final inning as the home team, down 3-1.

Brad was six-two, with a wealth of baseball knowledge and high-level experience. He had a commanding presence, and every kid’s eyeball returned Brad’s gaze as he scanned this team of hustlers.

“What’s the most fun thing about baseball?” Brad bellowed.

“Winning!” the kids answered in unison.

There it was. The boys entered the dugout with renewed determination. They went on to put up three hits, with a clutch stolen base at second that set up the final run and a victory.

The Governors, 2025. Photo by Greg Kimmich

I’ve coached with Brad for seven years. And I first heard him ask that question to a group of young Little League players when they were eight years old, at the Coach Pitch level.

“What’s the most fun thing about baseball?”

Back then, the kids had some different answers.

“Hitting a homerun.”

“Hanging out with your friends.”

“Sliding in the dirt!”

“Catching fly balls.”

To each of these answers, Brad shook his head.

“Nope. It’s winning,” Brad grinned. “Winning is the right answer. Winning is the most fun thing about baseball.”

I loved that simple message. And I’ve been passing it on to our teams ever since.

Notice that Brad didn’t ask what’s the most important thing about baseball. For that question, a good answer might be how you play the game, how you work together as a team, playing hard no matter the situation, camaraderie, respect and so much more.

Brad also didn’t ask what the players liked best about baseball. He asked what’s the most fun. And for any competition, Brad would tell you that the answer is winning. I agree.

When you win, you play more games than those who lose. And that’s more fun.

Winning in the batter’s box means you have a better chance of going through the lineup and batting again. That’s fun too.

Winning as a pitcher means you keep the opposition from scoring, giving your teammates another chance to put more runs on the scoreboard. More fun.

And when a third baseman dives to snag a one-hopper that’s smoked down the line, when he jumps to his feet and rips the ball to first base for the out, winning that moment is fun.

Achieve the objective. Win. That’s the most fun thing about baseball.

READ: Troutbitten | Some Teams Are All Heart

What’s the Most Fun Thing About Fishing?

You see where I’m going with this, right? Our objective while fishing is to catch a fish. That’s the point. And as catch-and-release anglers, we don’t fish to put food on the table. We fish . . . because it’s fun.

We can all list a hundred other reasons why we enjoy fishing. It’s the environments where trout live, the problem solving, the daily mystery, the beauty of the woods and the water, the therapy of being immersed in a river and a chance to interact with one of nature’s swimming creations.

But none of that means much without a win once in a while. Catching fish is the motivation. And without that reward, without the feedback that we’re doing something right and improving, all those other intangibles fade away fast.

The common sentiment that “It’s just nice to be out there,” does not last more than a handful of trips. And every long-term angler that I’ve met has the skills to catch fish regularly.

Losing, over and over, produces the next quitter. But winning (putting trout in the net) leads to a deeper interest and more connection with the other things that surround this game.

READ: Troutbitten | On Your Own Terms

My friend, Sawyer, with a nice trout, fooled with a cicada in 2008. (Apparently, everything was out of focus back then.)

Cicadas

The big bugs have come and gone, now. I chased trout with a matching dry fly for five weeks and never tied on another pattern — just cicadas. That was my plan and my promise when I reeled in the two-inch long foam and deer hair fly last time, seventeen years ago. It was the best fishing of my life back then. And those weeks all those years ago will remain the best, still.

The action was excellent this time, but it came in fits and stutters. Heavy rains and flooded rivers took away any consistency for the bugs and therefore the trout. Last time, with a constant weather pattern, cicadas left the trees and flew every morning around nine-o-clock, once the sun dried off the dew that had collected on their wings overnight. With cicadas in the air in plague numbers, enough of them made in-flight mistakes to accidentally land in the river. And trout were ready for it, like clockwork, every morning at nine. Amazing action lasted all day, until about five or six-o-clock, when the cicadas would start to put themselves away for the evening. But this time was very different . . .

READ: Troutbitten | Fish the Edges?

I watched and listened to local anglers’ interest wax and wane with the relative ease or difficulty of chasing the hatch. Higher flows meant that very few anglers would hit the big rivers. So they went where the wading, the casting and the drifting was easier — they went where they could win. And when catching trout was better than they’d ever experienced, for both size and numbers, the word got out, and more anglers came for the action. Then the weather would change again, the fish catching would subside, winning became tougher and anglers did not return.

I said earlier that I fished a cicada pattern, exclusively, for the last five weeks. But I also fished it off and on, for a couple of weeks preceding the real interest of any trout to a cicada. I was on the water every day from the first of June to July 9th, missing only a few days to coach baseball tournaments. I also logged long hours, regardless of the action. And I often fished the river with the highest flows (as long as it wasn’t muddy), just because I knew no one else would be there.

That’s me in 2008. That’s a trout with a cicada in its mouth. Photo by Steve Sawyer.

I had my wins, and when action was fast and furious, staying focused was easy. But even when the action was slow, I stayed the course and remained true to my promise from seventeen years ago, as I searched for the next patch of fish that were hunting cicadas.

Two weeks ago, we had a four-day tournament in Cooperstown, New York, and when I returned, the cicadas had disappeared. Within just a few days, nature had cleaned up after itself. The birds, squirrels, chipmunks and insects had eaten nearly every body part of dead cicadas, leaving hardly a scrap of evidence that the whole event had ever happened. Even the wings were gone.

READ: Troutbitten | Sawyer, Cicadas and the Clinic

Regardless, I kept fishing the pattern, because a few trout were still hunting. I called it fishing the memory. Action dropped from fifty fish days down to fifteen fish days, and then fewer. Until finally, after a three day stint of ten-hour days with my friend, Sawyer, we had to admit that the cicada fishing was finished. Two or three fish in a long day — getting lucky a couple times, with eats from curious, smaller fish — just wasn’t enough winning. It wasn’t as much fun. And yesterday, after two-plus miles of searching and thousands of casts, I reeled in the cicada and promised myself to do the whole thing again in seventeen more years.

Sawyer and Dom, 2025. Something must be very funny.

Same couple of studs, in the winter of 2008. 🙂

I’m not saying I won’t tie on a cicada again in the next month or so, just to fish the memory a little more. But I am saying that I’m ready to fish dry ants, drift some favorite nymphs and strip a few streamers. I just need more wins again. Because you know what’s the most fun thing about fishing . . .

Fish hard, friends.

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