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They say a typical man thinks about you-know-what every seven seconds. Personally, I find that hard to believe. That'd leave a guy like me no time during the day to think about fishing. However, if the findings of that obscure study are true, I think I have some reason to be concerned.

Each year about this time I begin to seriously think about trout fishing. By serious I mean frequent, invasive thoughts that mentally put me on a quiet stream surrounded by lush green foliage under a golden sun and a clear azure sky. I suppose I begin to think so often about stream fishing this time of year for precisely that reason. It's the season. The season of long nights and short days. Bright sunshine days that look deceptively warm, until you see the mercury on the outside thermometer -- stuck near the 20 below zero mark -- telling you otherwise. It's the season itself that forces my mind to mentally transport me to open water, to feel the sun's rays warming the back of my neck and hands. Actually, it's a pretty effective coping mechanism that sees me through many bitterly cold days.

Of course, maybe it's simply the case that I'm not exactly wired right. Maybe my one-track fishing brain would baffle and completely set the psychological world on its ear. What if my personal you-know-what amounts to nothing more than fishing? In my over-active imagination, I have a cartoon bubble of a tweedy, pipe smoking German psychoanalyst giving a lecture at Princeton to an auditorium full of grad students. An overhead projector shows an image of me on a screen wearing canvas waders and holding a fly rod. My eyes look distant and unfocused. Mr. Tweedy taps his lectern with a wooden pointer and begins to address the audience in a thick accent, "We've conducted extensive dream analysis and interpretations on this particular individual and found that his frequent dreams of fishing mean absolutely nothing more than fishing. We found him completely devoid of dream symbols and latent ideas representing repressed emotions and drives. Hmm. Very interesting indeed. There doesn't seem to be a single clear thought in this man's head -- conscious, unconscious or otherwise -- except fishing. A pity really."

So the next time you engage me in conversation and get the uneasy feeling I'm staring at something a half mile behind you, don't panic. You're not losing your marbles. I'm simply tuning you out. Along with whatever nonsense you're attempting to tell me. Don't take it personally. I'm just thinking about you-know-what. And now that you know my you-know-what doesn't mean what you logically think it means, you can breathe a bit easier. At least my 1,000-yard stare isn't as overtly rude as Pee-Wee Herman when he sticks his fingers in his ears and yells, "La-la-la-la-la. What?! What?! I can't hear you! What?!"

Oh, one last thing. If I break out in a broad smile while you're droning on and on, it has nothing to do with the content of your one-sided conversation. I'm smiling because I just slipped my landing net under a beautiful brown trout.

I'm sorry, would you mind repeating that? I didn't catch what you just said.

Dan Brown's weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie's Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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