When icicles begin to drip on my head as I enter the front door, I know it's time to sort my over-stuffed tacklebox and bulging fly-fishing vest, to assess what new things I need--or think I need. My wife doesn't like it when lures and gadgets get scattered all over the kitchen table, but my daughter loves it. Ever since my daughter was very little, I let her be my "assistant," a job that usually involves sorting through rubber worms and twister tails.

While she harasses her mother with these "real" worms, I clean, rearrange, and discard. I never throw the damaged lures that have worked time after time; instead, I find honored places for these great pretenders: the faded plastic frog which always draws a bass strike (if not the bass) from the lilypads, the chipped chartreuse spinner with the slightly bent hook from one too many northerns, or the mashed #18 Adams that often works when the new blue winged olive should. What I do throw away are the perfect lures from two years ago, those colorful but unproductive gadgets designed to catch fishermen, not fish.

Cleaning my tackle box and fly-fishing vest is an established spring ritual. Re-supplying the fly-fishing boxes is an important part of the ritual: I must find room for the numerous flies I had stockpiled during the winter, having forgotten the fall sales I had previously plundered. Some of the ritual is also due to the necessities of my increasing age: now then, which gadgets are in which pockets?

My thoughts turn to lakes and streams I'd like to be on. I don't often dwell on the times I had to fight overhead branches or slide down treacherous banks. Instead, I think about watching the water's surface for signs of a hatch, or floating in the belly boat and casting the fly near the lilypads, paddling just enough to counter the wind and the waves.

My reveries don't often turn to catching a trophy fish, though fish are frequently in my thoughts. More often I see a quiet lake encircled by pines or the rushing stream between the limestone bluffs. It's not the fish I seek, but the evening sky, glowing pink and violet, reflected in dark water.

Or it's the heron rising from the reeds.

Or the loon diving nearby.

I suspect other fishermen share the same thoughts. If so, fishing is not so much about catching fish but about being in the last remnants of wilderness left to most of us. It's about being in a place where I don't need resumes, job networking, or committee consensus building. Everything I need for success is contained in one box at my side, the pockets of my vest, and a rod in my hand.

And this ritual preparation is about the changing of the seasons. For the memories are imbedded in the seasons: a warming spring wind rustling the new cottonwood leaves-time for a caddis hatch to begin; a hot summer day cooled by an evening breeze-time for casting a maxi-diver into a quiet bay; fall leaves cascading near the canoe-time to try for that bass near the log.

It's also about growing older, for each spring marks another year. Each spring brings a little more appreciation for nature, for life, for time.

Maybe fishing has less to do with catching fish than with catching memories. And memories are not caught and released but kept and cherished. And better yet, we can pass those memories down: my father taught me how to tie a jig to the line; in turn I teach my daughter to stop the fly rod as if she were snapping a towel; in turn she--well, time enough for that later, much later.

In our sharing, we, too, can be just a little like the seasons, returning, just a bit, as we pass our fishing lore along to the next generation. That's why I let my daughter help me sort the tackle box--for when she helps me, we share a common experience. Like a fishing trip, cleaning the tackle box becomes a shared memory.

Just as I have to strive to keep what few bonds I have left with nature, I want to create all the memories I can with my child, while I still have the seasons.