At one point in my life I was a flyfisherman who painted. I guess I had my priorities screwed up which might explain why I wasn't getting anywhere with my painting. Now I'm a painter who occasionally flyfishes. The spring fever that I feel these days, are no longer the whispering voices of trout and bass, but the urge to set up my outdoor easel alongside a bluff and paint with abandon.
        There are quite a few artists/fisherman out there, Neil Welliver is one of the name that comes to mind.(recently deceased) Most of my closest friends are fisherman, a few of them artists, but no artists/fisherman as far as I know. You would think there would be more of us out there because there are some things that flyfishing and painting have in common; that contemplative in the moment feeling that you get when everything seems to be going right. The brushstrokes materialize before your eyes but you're not exactly sure how they got there. Fish are rising to casts laid down with an instinctive perfection that you didn't know you were capable of. Rare moments that tease us into coming back for more.
      For me the connection has to do with attitude. There are people that I've fished with that will wade right into a body of water, chest deep, and start flailing away at some unseen target across the river. They are standing where they should be fishing. When I go out to fish I usually don't string up my rod or tie on a fly until I get to the river or lake. I stand away from the shore line and spend a good deal of time reading the water while I string up my line. I'm formulating a plan of attack and looking for the most likely places to find fish. I will even make casts from behind a tree or rock carefully working the area closest to me before I even step into the water.
     When I paint I use a similar approach.(sounds crazy, I know, but hear me out!) Rather than jump right into painting, using my brush as a palette knife, and making up the colors and tones as I go along, I will pre-mix my colors for an object or area before I paint. While I'm mixing those colors (strings), I'm looking at my subject, and formulating a strategy. Now there's something to be said for spontaneity, but I'd rather be spontaneous with preparation. Theres a big difference between improvisation and slapdash bravado. Once I start to paint I'm off and running, and when I fish, as my friends will head-shakingly attest to, I will cover several miles of water.
      When I approach a large river, lake or estuary, I find it helpful to break it down into smaller sections. It's a little bit of a mindgame. I concentrate on one little strip as if that's all there is. If I'm thinking about other sections of the river besides where I'm fishing than I'm not in the moment and I will be off my game. Sometimes I will walk out about fifteen feet from the shore line and turn my back on the big river and fish that fifteen feet of shoreline as if I was standing on the other side of a small stream.More often than not, this has worked pretty well. The fish don't have any preference for one side of the river or the other. They're looking for food, safety from predators(structure), and comfort (deflected water) "aren't we all?"
     When I'm working on a still life I will pick an object, or objects, and I will concentrate on that area of the painting as if that was the entire painting. I will mix the string for the object and after blocking in the basic colors I will proceed to paint part of the background around it, even parts of adjacent objects. Then I will go back into the object and proceed to stitch all the various tones and colors together, being careful to harmonize with the small area of background that I've painted around it. I will paint that area up to completion as if I was never going to paint it again.( although I will often go back into an area, if necessary, after the entire painting is completed)
     You might expect this approach to have a hob-nailed, jig-sawed puzzle look to it, but it doesn't. How do I know that the various parts of the painting will work together when I'm done? I just know. The tightrope walker doesn't have to continously look down to know where the ground is. I trust my instincts. I've worked hard to have them. In painting and flyfishing,  if you've taken the time to prepare, rather than blunder in, you'll be able to work with confidence, and you'll be in the zone.