Thanks for the compliments. Its just fun to write about stuff you love, at least when its out of want-to without a speck of have-to involved. Unlike this TF board where I generally only lurk, my long posts are not always quite so universally welcomed elsewhere, although they are really intended just to liven up the joint and maybe more fundamentally than that, provide me with an outlet.
Seems we have some signficant things in common (many I'd bet). I caught MY first trout utterly alone and without guidance of any kind in a stream somewhere in or around Catoctin State Park not long after I was six years old, on a cane pole, with a braided black line (with mandatory large hardware nut attached for a pendulum weight) tied directly to a long-shank hook irresistibly ensconced with a big old chunk of my Mother's delicious (and rather effective) fried chicken, of all things!!! The first one to hit and also be detected (I didn't have a float, so I guess I was straight-line nymphing with a bamboo rod and friend chicken, technically speaking), I levered high above my head and well back into the woods, upon which I immediately pounced like a cat might an escaping mouse! I caught several of what I believe were most likely native brook trout that day, perhaps with one rainbow. All I can recall for sure was how drop-dead gorgeous those first trout were... quite a step up (if you will) from my first-ever piscine conquest (that's about what I thought of it as, at the time), a 'lowly' blowfish or northern puffer (and that's another long story I'll spare you for now, unless asked of course). As proud and surprised as I was to catch these beautiful critters during my first (successful anyway) stream exposure, they were just too pretty and I felt guilty about killing them, so I let 'em go instead. Thanks for jogging that recollection, really!
Now, as for your closing line... I know you didn't say "I'll figure it ALL out at some point" and that is a very good thing. Nobody ever completely figures out very many (if any) kinds of fishing of course (too many variables to be able to predict absolutely what an outcome might be on any given day).
However, once one gets sort'a close to doing so, a good bit of the pure delight in pursuing that kind of fishing starts to go by the wayside, at least for me. Kind'a like the difference between a first kiss and just another peck on the cheek? I'm a firm believer that the early-middle section of the learning curve (of whatever flavor of fishing we might be talking about) is far and away the most exciting and memorable and satisfying portion.
When you are just starting to get your stuff together in a particular time and place, after a particular thing, its actually starting to make some sense, you can somewhat predict how you need to proceed or adapt under the various conditions, and so every single blessed (literally) "next time out" has the potential (which is frequently realized, if your timing is any good) to really bring more and/or larger fish to hand. Geez is that ever exciting!!! Then, assuming you go overboard with indulging that kind of fishing in that time and place... well, its not too long before you get to experience it at or pretty darn near its very best, which is (or can be) a two-sided thing.
I had that experience of icefishing for DCL's frisbee bluegills this past year, and it literally left me in a happy daze. Unfortunately, my success went straight from nearly zero to right over the top, and so there's now nowhere (at least productivity-wise) to go but down now (bummer!). Can't realistically ever expect to duplicate, much less exceed, my best day out there... anywhere! Classic case of too much, too soon kind'a spoiling (or at least shortening) the party. On the plus side however, few of us (and certainly not me) will ever have enough money or time to run out of new and exciting fisheries to try and master... its the old 'so many fish...' line.
So, as long as I'll be tolerated for running on and on, I'll be sticking my head into the FW board and may not be too shy about it. Its a lot bigger fishbowl than I'm used to, and I don't want to come off wrong by the way I might swim in it, y'know?