Smoking while fishing
- Thread starter Paul6.5
- Start date
Bamboozle
Well-known member
I was smart enough to quit cigarettes while I was still in high school, A LONG time ago when a pack of smokes was under a $1.00.
Even though I used a pipe to wean myself off cigarettes and smoke cigars when I fish, I never once had the urge to go back to cigarettes.
When I am NOT fishing, I'm NOT smoking cigars which means during some periods, it could be months between cigars with zero urge.
I guess I'm lucky....
Bamboozle
Well-known member
I'm a maduro fan. Two in regular rotation are Arturo Fuente 850 Flor Fina or a Ashton Aged Maduro No. 40 Toro.
However, the first cigar I'll light up on any fishing trip of over several hours is always a Padron Maduro - Magnum or an Arturo Fuente Gran Reserva - Canones. These are LONG cigars at 9" & 8'5" respectively but they burn, draw and smoke beautifully.
I never light them until I am completely rigged up and ready to start casting because I once burned through the Spectra string on my zinger. Fortunately, it was one of several serviceable Abel zingers that I got super cheap, so I sent it back to be restrung.
FWIW - Gear Keeper now offers an aluminum bodied micro zingers for $35 that can be serviced if you are a klutz.
wildtrout2
Well-known member
That's how long I've been a smoker. Being a pack a day smoker for many years, I at least cut back to a half pack a day, about ten years ago. I remember saying I'll quit when smokes go to $.75 a pack. I'm now paying $9.15 a pack.
I will be adding that to my humidor to try. My go to is from My Father their “The Judge” in grand robusto
This sounds quite a bit like my story.. I smoked cigarettes at a rate of 30-40/day for about 20 years, then finally quit in 1990. Stayed that way for about 6 years until I was fishing a Mifflin County freestone one day and the gnats were like a fog. I couldn't hack it and retreated to a convenience store and bought a pack of the cheapest cigarillos they had. That fixed the gnat problem but it also put me right back on cigarettes for the next five years. Finally, I quit for good in 2000 after Petunia explained to me that cigarettes were particularly bad for my health because if I didn't get off them, she might coldcock me with a ball bat.
I'm still a slave to nicotine though. I've been chewing the 2 mg Wal-Mart gum for the last 26 years, starting out at 20-25 pcs/day and tapering now to 4-5. I'll eventually get off it but for now, it's progress not perfection that matters. Besides, I kind of like the gum. The only real complaint I have is that it is a son-of-a-pup to keep it lit..
I think the amount of difficulty or lack of same we might have with quitting is about our internal wiring. I believe there is an addiction gene or something very similar.
Streammagic237
Well-known member
When I was around 16 years old I went with an uncle and a guide he was friends with who was referred to at the " captain" he was about 80 at the time and smoked a pipe , anyway I still recall that hunt any time I smell pipe smoke , windows up heat on full blast and myself in the back of a Jeep Cherokee nestled between about 50 Canada goose decoys in a haze of smoke as we drove out to the fields . Still think on it fondly though have not hunted in many years .
Bamboozle
Well-known member
How LONG you smoked also has a lot to do with it...
Even though I'm proud of quitting cigarettes at age 17, it was only a couple of years prior that I could really smoke a pack or more a day.
When I first began the habit in earnest, my parents didn't know I smoked and I wasn't one of the kids risking suspension in junior high by smoking in the bathrooms so I was hard pressed to smoke 10 cigarettes a day.
My parents discovering my vice and going to a high school with a "smoking area" facilitated an increase in consumption, but believe it or not, that "Surgeon General's warning" and a pledge I made to myself afterwards to quit by age 25 made it easier to "pack it in" (pardon the pun) at age 17.
Regardless, if you roll all of my smoking up in a ball, I probably only smoked 3 or 4 years before quitting. Maybe I'm lucky or wired different, but I hardly think quitting after 3 or 4 years is even close to the same thing as managing to quit after 20, 30 or 40 years.
Nymph-wristed
Well-known member
I smoked weed a couple times while fishing and ended up sitting on the bank staring at the water, sort of like a dry or die fly fisherman 😉
Bamboozle
Well-known member
A blow-up with braid on a casting reel cured me of the desire to ever smoke weed & fish.
I was picking that mess out for hours... 😉
I was picking that mess out for hours... 😉
