Favorite Non-Fish Fishing Photos

I've always said that the best aspects of fly fishing are the 360-degree views around you and the people you share them with, rather than the fish themselves. I certainly respect and admire a strong focus on the mission at hand. But in my book, if you aren't looking around, you're not really getting the most of your fishing.

As such, I've been taking a lot of photographs (Romano is coaching me) in recent years. Curiously, most of my favorite fishing images don't have any fish in them at all. I call them non-fish fishing photos. Clouds that look like iron and light hitting the canyon wall just so--those things.

Here's a pretty good example. I was fishing for pike from a boat on Lake Athabasca in northern Saskatchewan with my buddy Chris Hunt. I set my rod down to dig through the fly box for another pattern, and when I picked my head up, this dragonfly was doing a high wire act. It hung around just long enough for me to snap a couple photos, then flew away.

Do you have any favorite non-fish fishing photos you can describe? Things that you saw, pictures you took, only by virtue of the fact that you were out fishing, but the fish wasn't the focus?