Time on the water

[The Mad Duck 0]

12-15 hours weekly at this point

[Steeldrifter 0]

It varies for me. While I do have local opportunities for warm water fishing, my  true love is trout in rivers so I normally go about 3hrs North of where I live for that. On average I try to get at least 30 full days on the river every year. When I do it I usually do longer trips for 5-14 days at a time rather than just a day trip. And then numerous half days or few hour type local trips on top of that.

[DFoster 0]

I'm out at least one or both weekend mornings 6AM until noon.  During the week I try to get a few hours at one of the local streams when I'm not maintaining the house.  I'm fortunate to have this one a 3 minute walk behind home.

[JSzymczyk 0]

every year that goes by, I say my goals are to fish more and bike more.    Every year that goes by,  I work more.   We seem to have it all wrong.  I'm 51, and have been working nonstop full-time-plus for well over 30 years.   Never been unemployed.  There are days when I feel like when I am finally able, IF I am finally able to not work, I'll be too old and broke down to enjoy not having to work. Obviously I'm not very intelligent or I would have figured this sh*t out by now.    There were circumstances which caused me to largely stop fly fishing local streams over the last 8-9 years.   This year one of my kayak fishing buddies caught the fly fishing sickness so thankfully I've been doing more this summer, and tying more to keep him from buying child-slave-labor crap flies tied in Jerkistan.    I don't have the miles on my bike that I had last year, but not too far off of it.   WORK always seems to get in the way.   I've been fishing one morning or so every weekend and trying to get in a couple hours one night a week, and getting 25-35 mile ride at least 3 times a week, with covid and a new job it hasn't been easy. 

[cphubert 0]

9 minutes ago, JSzymczyk said:

Every year that goes by,  I work more

Shipmate I just turned 66 worked all my life, retired twice, finally stopped working on 12 Jun 20 all I can say is I don't know where I found the time to work. I can't figure where the time goes I am fishing more but not as much as I planned. She got twice the husband at half the money, but as you said getting older and broke down it takes me longer to think about what I plan to do in the time that I used to do it.  Tell you the truth though, I still kind of miss the grind.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

My  average work day guiding works out to be about 13 hours all told, until my skiff is back in the garage  - but only 8 of those hours are on the water... That might be because I rack up more than 20,000 miles a year towing my skiff from my house down to the 'glades.  Every booking has me on the road a round trip of 200 miles roughly... I keep very close account of it it for tax purposes each year... Night trips are much closer to home with only a 70 mile round trip.....

One of my anglers who comes from Europe is lucky enough to fish with guides 20 days a year worldwide (literally - The Seychelles, Africa, south America and other places besides... He says that you just have to put your time on the water.... A few of those days will be poor - many will be satisfactory to great - but only a few will be outstanding... But, you have to spend your days on the water to get to those outstanding days... I don't get to see him as often as I'd like since the Everglades are only one of many places available world wide.... 

 

Me, I'm content with the 'glades - they're my favorite place in this world... 

[Bryon Anderson 0]

Like Steeldrifter said, I have lots of warmwater opportunities fairly close to home (might be because we live at the same latitude in the same state lol) but I dearly love the trout rivers that are all 2-3 hours' drive north of home. I have a buddy who has a driftboat and a cottage near the Manistee River, and he fishes a lot in the spring (April through June), so I get in on as much of that as I can. By the time true summer arrives, he gets pulled into various projects I know not what, but they all involve his wife, kids, and grandkids. At that point, I tend to switch my focus to bass and panfish close to home for the most part. When I was younger, I would think nothing of jumping in the car after a full day at work and driving 2 hours north and fishing until well past dark, returning in the wee hours, grabbing a very little sleep and doing it all over again the next day. Now, after work on a weekday, I'm more liable to think, "Hmm...4 hours of driving for 4 hours of fishing, or 2 hours driving for 6 hours fishing?" And, more often than not, that ends up playing out the way you'd think it would. 

Now that my kids are off to college, I imagine I'll get more of the full-day (or two-day) excursions on weekends that I've been squeezing in maybe every other weekend up to now. Time will tell.