Great looking 100% cotton shirt. Please refer to our sizing chart for measurements.This design also available as a men's or women's tee shirt, and a men's hoodie and sweat shirt in our other amazon.com listings."If people concentrated on the really important things in life,
there'd be a shortage of fishing poles."
- Doug Larson
With a last name like Fischer you'd think I'd know a thing or two about fish and particularly how to land one into your frying pan.But I don't.Never have.Even before giving up the fish-bones-in-yer-teeth diet for a vegetarian one eight years ago, I didn'tpossess much skill in the art of angling.Not for lack of effort, mind you.Oh, I was quite avid about the sport for some time.Avid but despairingly inept.In strictly statistical terms I was lousy.I imagine now that it took me, at best, 200 casts of my line for every fish that I caught(if you can call those little sunfish that look like decorative soap bars fish at all).That works out to a whopping0.5% productivity of catching anything beyond the usual glump of weeds, discarded fishing line, sludge-filled sneakers, or whatever else made up the less than idyllic underworld of Hamilton's Cootes "Paradise" at the western most tip of Lake Ontario.And that's just looking at casting productivity.When I stop to think of my efficiency in terms of time, my success rate at the art of catching my dinner was infinitesimal - say 0.001% of my time.
Yet, as I recall those days, I remember going fishing at any chance I could get.Why?What would possibly possess a guy to meditate over mere possibility from the crack of dawn until dusk most summer evenings?It certainly couldn't have been any great aspiration to become the next Bob Izumi on Saturday afternoon television.I clearly had no future in the sport.It couldn't have been the satisfaction of cooking up my catch - the quantity of which was enough to provide an appetizer at best ("catch of the day on a cracker anyone?")It wasn't even some familial need to perpetuate the long line of fishers in our family - as far as I know, most of us Fischer's were actually agricultural farmers.So why did I "fish" like there was no tomorrow?I guess because, pure and simple, it was a lot of fun!Pure pleasure.Simple pleasure.
There was the deep joy of anticipation, the repose, the whiling away of lazy hours, the solitude, the cheese sandwiches warming in my backpack under a 12 o'clock sun.There was the retreat from life's concerns to contemplate the things I really valued in my life - like freedom, like meaning, like a connection to the greater whole of which I am a mere small fry.There was in "fishing" a time and space for me to slowly acquiesce to the benevolent goodness of this river of life.Fishing, in the final analysis, helped me to say "yes" to my own life.Come to think of it, with my general ineptitude in angling, these other things must have been the real "catch" for me.
Now, as a vegetarian, I don't fish anymore.But maybe I should.I probably wouldn't catch anything anyway.Maybe I should just toss my line into the water with one of my father's lug-nuts on the end the way I used to practice my casting skills in my parents garden, fishing for two foot cucumbers (maybe that's where my vegetarianism started!).With my line snagged under some submerged log, I could reconnect with the seminal joy of those teenaged fishing excursions - my great foil for spiritual awakening.I wonder if I still have that old Shimano fly-casting rod?Maybe I'll dig it out this weekend and instead of packing my tackle box full of hooks and lures and fluorescent gummy worms, I'll fill it with some nice cucumber sandwiches, a soy shake and a copy of Vegetarian Times .How's that for a new angle on the old art? And now if you'll excuse me, I'd rather be fishing - wink, wink.See you on the water.
Peter H. Fischer is a speechwriter living in Vancouver, British Columbia. He can be reached through his website at http://www.fischerspeeches.com
shimano fishing