You’re never going to look back, excited about the mornings you slept in.
It will never be the half-way, B- for effort fishing that you’ll remember. It will always be the mornings when the coffee couldn’t come soon enough. The times when you had to wait and watch the minutes tick by before you could make that first legal cast. All the uncomfortable nights in reclined seats and makeshift campsites. It is the times that you worked for it, that you went for it, that you felt like you earned it.
Those times are the times that will come up first as you remember last season. The moments you still talk about years and decades from now.
Are there pragmatic benefits? Absolutely. Pressured waters fish much better for those who get to the coveted runs first. More hours on the river translate into more opportunities. Hiking further and deeper puts you places others won’t or can’t go. Again: you’ll be happy you fished with a bit more of an intense edge.
But there is more to it than that.