By Chris Hunt
Years ago, when I was cranking out fishing content for my old blog, I did a feature each Friday titled, “20 Questions,” which was a thinly veiled homage to the back page interivews of Vanity Fair where folks were asked off-the-wall questions via the famous Proust Questionnaire, like, “What is your greatest fear?” or “On what occasion to do you lie?” I tweaked the questionnaire to give it a bit of a fishing bent, and asked some more updated questions.
For instance, I would often ask folks, “What’s on your iPod?”
Now, I get it. Today, even the iPod is obsolete, but you get the idea. Learning people’s musical tastes gives outsiders a small window into their world, and I was, more often than not, surprised at the responses I got. Folks have some ecclectic musical tastes.
Last night, Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen played the Colonial Theater here in Idaho Falls. Both of these guys are “on my iPod” when it comes to fishing music. I’ve listened to Lovett for years, but I came late to Keen—a buddy of mine introduced me to him as we were driving into a small tributary of the Bear River in Wyoming to chase fat, migratory cutthroats about 15 years ago. Now, every time I hear old Robert Earl singing about Mom and Dad getting drunk at the Christmas party, I am transported back to a remote, willow-lined creek high in the Wyoming Range where rangy native trout eat streamers the size of alley rats. It’s a weird juxtaposition, but it is what it is. Funny how music does that to you, isn’t it?
A few years back, I heard a cover of that song at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels after a day of fishing the Guadalupe. That river would be the “home trout water” for both Keen and Lovett, who roomed together in college and have toured together for years. I bet they’d be fun to fish with.
We all have some pretty unique tastes when it comes to music, and “fishin’ music” is no different. Some artists and some tunes just … set the mood.
Here’s to the music we fish by. May it always make our adventures better.
Chris Hunt is the national digital director for Trout Media. He lives and works and listens to a lot of Jimmy Buffett in Idaho Falls, Idaho.