Trout Whisperer - For a good night’s rest, don’t count my walleyes, or yours

Let’s say back in the day, your fulltime job was watching Mr. Mackelernies flock of sheep. You being the diligent sheepherder you are, would take care each and every evening to count his sheep, thereby knowing the flock was fully intact. Once knowing this, you might even sleep better.

Then let’s say your lying back, counting your sheep and your neighboring sheepherder walks up to you and says, what ya doing, to which you reply, I’m counting my sheep, it so helps me to feel better before I sleep. To which he responds does that really work, and with barely a care you say, it sure works for me as he finishes his visit and wanders back to his flock.

That evening he was gonna try and get a good night’s rest, so he counted his sheep, and when he woke up in the morning, he was convinced he slept better so that next Saturday at the local sheepfold he told all the other sheepherder’s around about the effectiveness of counting sheep had on his wonderful nights sleep. It caught on quickly.

Fast forward a couple hundred years into just last month where Oxford university, ever the curious minded, just concluded several years of research and observation on the effectiveness of counting sheep to sleep, from the standpoint of

“Rhythmic timing of a repetitive image in metered visualization could cause relaxation and help you fall asleep”.

Turns out, after all these years of me not being a sheepherder, so naturally I didn’t count sheep, I used what was available to me, I would try counting my few walleyes to go to sleep, and Oxford university proved beyond the shadow of any doubt, counting anything, big numbers like sheep or stars, or small stringers of fish before trying to sleep like me, enhances your ability to not fall asleep faster. Knowing this now, my only question is, how did they know I don’t catch enough walleyes.   

- The Trout Whisperer