Learning Where Control Ends
What permit fishing taught me about acceptance and accountability
Written by Hunter Leavine
Photos by Mason Erwin & Jesse Males
It was too early to start thinking about lunch, too late to pretend the day still had unlimited potential, and the rain had lasted long enough to soak through my backup rain jacket.
Permit fishing requires a special kind of delusion. You spend months thinking about a fish that may or may not appear. You fly across oceans. You buy excessively expensive gear. You study knots. You tell yourself that if you prepare well enough, stay positive enough, and want it badly enough, maybe the whole thing will come together. Oh, and the flies. We won’t even go into how excessive the tackle gets.
Then the sky turns gray, the rain starts falling, and you remember the entire endeavour depends on you being able to see the fish.
And we could not see shit.
No sunlight. No shadows. No nervous water. No dark shape sliding across a flat. Just rain on the surface and a few grown men pretending to be patient.
At first, you do all the things that make you feel like you still have some agency.
You check the radar. You recheck the radar. You ask a question about the weather nobody can answer. You adjust your leader. You look at your fly. You look at the guide. You look back at the sky like maybe it will have pity for you. It doesn’t.
Eventually, you run out of things to manage.
So you just sit there and take it.
You enter that specific kind of pout only anglers understand. Not dramatic enough to be called a full-blown fit, but not mature enough to be called acceptance. You go quiet.
Then you start to quietly shame yourself for being the kind of man who invested so much just to sit in a storm and feel sorry for himself.
All the while, the permit does not care.
The weather does not care how far you traveled. The clouds do not care what the trip cost. The fish are not aware of the time you spent practicing to throw little feather their way.
Nature does not work for you. She is not under your control, and she does whatever she wants.
And that is where the lesson begins.
I have spent far too much of my life trying to control things that were never really mine to control.
Outcomes.
People.
Timing.
Perception.
Uncertainty.
Maybe you can relate.
Sometimes that instinct came from pride. Sometimes anxiety. Sometimes it was my own insecurity dressed up as determination.
I called it leadership when it was really fear. I called it protecting people when it was really managing them. I called it power when it was really entitlement.
When I look back at some of my worst moments, I can see it more clearly now.
I often chose control over responsibility.
Control made me tense. Impatient. Defensive. Reactive. It narrowed my focus until I could only see the outcome I wanted instead of the reality in front of me. And the outcome usually suffered anyway.
Responsibility would have required something different.
Honesty.
Adaptability.
Presence.
Emotional control.
Fishing has a way of exposing this quickly.
You can do everything right on paper and still fail. You can wake up early, practice casting, buy the right gear, pick the right tides, go with the right guides, and still come up empty.
You can make the right cast—The fish can still refuse.
You can make the wrong cast—The fish can still refuse, but now with more emotional damage.
Which is usually when someone says the most annoying true thing in the world:
“That’s why they call it fishing.”
A lot of frustration begins when we confuse responsibility with control.
They are not the same thing.
Responsibility means doing your part well.
Control means believing your effort should guarantee the result you want.
Fishing does not reward that mindset very often.
The best fishermen I know are not passive. They are prepared, attentive, and disciplined. They pay attention to the details. They make good decisions. They take ownership of what is theirs to own.
But they also know where their authority ends.
They cannot bully the wind.
They cannot negotiate with the clouds.
They cannot force a fish to eat.
They adapt.
The people who struggle most on the water are usually the people fighting reality the entire time. Angry at the wind. Angry at the conditions. Angry at the guide. Angry at the fish for not cooperating. Angry that the day they imagined is not the day they were given.
I have seen successful, intelligent, fully grown men magically transform into toddlers in technical clothing.
It is not pretty. And unfortunately, I cannot pretend like I am above it.
I know that feeling because I have been that person.
Not just on the water.
In life, I have wasted a lot of energy trying to manage things that were never mine to manage. I have tried to control how people felt, how things appeared, how uncertain situations unfolded, and how quickly hard seasons resolved.
It did not make me stronger.
It made me harder to be around.
It made things worse for people I cared about.
That is the thing about control. From a distance, it can look responsible. Up close, it is really ugly.
Modern life does not help. We are constantly encouraged to optimize, predict, measure, manage, and remove as much uncertainty as possible.
But uncertainty always finds a way back in.
A storm rolls over.
The visibility disappears.
People do not respond the way you hoped.
Hard seasons take longer than you wanted.
Fishing reminds me of that every time I step on a boat.
It reminds me that acceptance is not the same as giving up.
Accountability is not the same as control.
Peace does not come from forcing the world to cooperate.
It comes from learning what is mine to carry, what is mine to correct, and what was never mine to command.
Maybe that is one of the better lessons the water is teaching me.
Do your part well. Then learn how to live with the rest.
Hunter Leavine is the host of the Captains Collective Podcast and cofounder of Drifter Fish Club. His work explores fishing as a lens into culture, travel, and the people who shape the places we love.
Sponsors: Skinny Water Culture, Purpose Built Optics, Turtle Box Audio, YETI, My Captain, and Hone Health.
Learn about traveling with the Drifter Fish Club HERE.
I’m also grateful to be partnering with Hone Health this summer. A lot of my recent work has been circling around what it means to take better care of ourselves—holistically.
If you’re interested in taking a more honest look at your health, longevity, and focus, you can learn more below.
Great piece of writing and advice. This should be linked to every client's inbox before a trip.