The last neon lights for about thirty miles signal the last opportunity for a hot meal for at least a half hour. For years, that gas station was my first stop out of town and my last stop before getting on the water. Spring creek brown trout, big river small mouth, and mountain brookies; the destinations varied but each one necessitated a large coffee and a breakfast sandwich from Sheetz.
I could have woken up five minutes earlier and had a bowl of cereal. I could have eaten a protein bar from the glovebox. I could have just not eaten anything.
Maybe. But would any of those choices have yielded one more fish? What, if anything, would I have gained? More appropriately, what would I have missed out on?
Generally speaking, you could argue that breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. When it comes to fishing, I believe that oft-quoted maxim is incontrovertibly true.
Fishing does have physical and mental requirements. Whether you are walking and wading or casting from a comfortable chair, your body is going to need some fuel. At the very least, early morning road hours call for something to keep you sharp. In that regard, breakfast is pivotal.
But it isn’t just about nutrition.
It can be an experience. It can be a tradition – a part of the trip that you always include; a part that you can look forward to. Breakfast itself doesn’t justify the early wake up and the long drive, but it certainly gives it a little flavor. And stopping for breakfast doesn’t have to challenge or to overshadow fishing (unless the meal is really good any the fishing is really lousy).
A breakfast burrito from a random cart outside of a strip mall was the last meal I ate before climbing the Rocky Mountains for the first time. I don’t remember the name of the establishment or the proprietor. The former probably didn’t exist in any formal sense. It didn’t matter. A dense, authentic, delicious package of eggs, sausage, and potatoes preceded my very first cutthroats. It was part of that day, and part of that fishing.
Living in New England, chain donuts are never more than a few minutes away at any moment. If I drive a little farther north, the chains are still present but other options materialize. Donuts get bigger (they also use potato in the dough). Coffee gets better (although waiting does funny things to taste buds’ objectivity). Both are important before a day of casting into the surf or hiking into the mountains.
Ever since I’ve told my boys stories of fishing, the stories have included every aspect of a fishing trip. Part of it is my own enjoyment of what transpires on the periphery of the fishing itself. Some of it is the knowledge that other things might hook or enthrall them before the fishing does.
Biscuits from a rural Virginia gas station, at the foot of the Shenandoah mountains, hooked and enthralled. My boys loved them: the wide variety of choices, the fact that they were the only kids in a room full of truckers and farmers, that they were doing what I do. And we did catch bass and sunfish that day. We still talk about the time on the river. But they never neglect to mention their biscuits (bacon, egg, and cheese; sausage; fried porkchop for me).
If we didn’t stop for breakfast then, and we don’t have plans to stop again, what would we be missing out on?