LOGGING FISH

Last week I turned 62, but had no trouble recalling a trip I took with my father and uncles five decades ago. A dime store notebook offered a Proustian key to a day on California's Stanislaus River. The other six people on the trip have, sad to say, died, but the memory of browns taken below the Dardanelles remains.

Last month I fished Lopez Island in the San Juans of Puget Sound. My record of this trip fit into a rather nicer binder, but the memory will remain sharp long after I'm gone. Then too, remembering good times and bad can help plan future trips and erase the rather unrealistic editor we all tote that seems to gloss over trips past. Frankly, fishing isn't that much worse.

Tackle's far better and, I hope, my techniques have improved as well. Still, fishing isn't really about fish. It's about memories, and these fade faster than we like. I note this as I've written fishing articles since 1969. So my tear sheet files add to my memory bank as well.

So too, do photographs. In my case we only take color transparencies that, these days, we can scan and print in house. Years back we used b&w and color prints.

Besides the graphics, you need the 5W's - who, what, where, when and why and, of course, the how. These kinds of things can be complete - mine aren't - or sketchy. Just get basics like dates, weather, water temperature and clarity, methods, time of day, etc. down so you can, as we used to say in legal days, "refresh your recollection" to plan future trips with an eye on the past.

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