Generally in life, I’m not big on looking back. Jobs, old relationships, major screw-ups and minor mistakes I try to leave in the rear-view mirror taking with me on the road ahead only the lessons learned from those experiences. There’s an old saying I’m fond of about moving forward at any juncture in life: “don’t look back, you’re not going that way.”

In the outdoors, however, looking back is often a good idea, even if you’re pretty sure nothing is there. Take for instance this weekend, a beautiful warm late July stretch with light breezes and perfect conditions for lazy casting with the fly rod for monster panfish lurking just off shore on the inner weed edge. The bluegills were nine inches or better in some cases, the green sunfish were topping 10, and the scattered crappies mixed in were going over 11. All of them made for fun and easy fishing. And with each pull and haul of my fly line, my casts came easier and easier from alongside the dock wading in to my knees to hit the depths, or when casting out from end of the structure.

Effortlessly the line unfurled in front of me from the rod tip in paper-clip folds that hung in the air like a perfect parabola before it rhythmically returned to the back cast for one last load and launch to hit the sweet spot 30 feet out where the biggest and best of the day’s panfish were locating. Every cast was like the wave of a conductor’s wand at the symphony, and the rod became an extension of my arm. All was in perfect alignment.

But as another saying goes, “all good things must come to an end.” Perhaps it was a loss of focus, or maybe even in my flow state my form began to fade from the hour or so of fast fishing, but with a thunk and a snap, my line jerked forward without my fly, the last of the trio of slumpbusters I had tied for the trip knowing it had been the go-to on previous weekends, especially for the crappies. As I brushed a wrap of the green line from my shoulder and stripped in the remaining loops which had crashed around my feet on the dock and in the water, I looked behind me, and sure enough, there was my gold cone-headed fly.

It was pinned past the barb in the black hemming of the tarpaulin cover of the boatlift behind me, in what in human terms would likely require a trip to the ER to remove the hook. Sure, in the past I may have bounced a few streamers off the tarp, and once or twice in my time this summer have hit it with my line and had to save a cast with an overexertion, but on this otherwise perfect day where I was feeling every pull of the line as it loaded and even the slightest strike of a fish at 15 yards, the hang up came as a surprise but also a welcome reminder.

When fishing with standard tackle or fly, the area behind each cast is an important zone, just like checking your backside while on the deer stand or keeping tabs on the six o’clock position from time to time for a surprise approach like duck and goose hunters do in the fall. While it’s likely that there aren’t any fish there — in the brush or branches on the shoreline, or in this case the boat cover behind me — knowing what’s behind you is an important thing to keep in mind, even as you’re looking forward … in our outdoors.