Diagnosing My Addiction

When I tell people I like to fish, the first question I get is if I eat my fish.  I don’t, and in fact, I find it much more interesting to simply observe the fish I catch before I release them.  Though I hate their smell, I find fish to be completely fascinating.  I consider them the grass of the aquatic world: they pop up anywhere water happens to collect, they come in all colors and shapes, and they are incredibly resilient.  I remember that even at a young age I loved to look at fish.  At the supermarket, I would drag my mother to the seafood section where she never shopped.  I’d hold her hand and stare at the variety of fish carefully laid out over the melting ice pellet table.  The cold fish’s eyes all faced the same direction, and when one happened to be chosen by a customer, its friends could do nothing but sit there and stare at the wall. 

My obsession with fish goes beyond my seeking them out in the supermarket.  They’re the only thing I know how to draw, and my mom has dedicated an entire section of our kitchen wall to my sketches.  I even have a map of the salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest posted on my bedroom door.  Fish, and more importantly, fishing captivate me, and though I’m completely wrapped up in it, I am baffled as to how it actually became a fun activity. 

My friend Jonah and I go fishing at a small pond in the woods.  In order to guarantee a catch, we go to the shallow cove at the end of the pond.  As we move closer to the inlet, I cast my line a few times to see how deep the water is.  I can see the green seaweed rising from underneath, and I know that this is a great place for fish…and snags.  The seaweed looks harmless enough—it sways underwater when a ripple goes by, and it seems as if my spinner should just glide right through.  When I cast into it, however, each of the three hooks from my furry lure pinch onto a strand of weed and seize up my line.  We drag the boat closer to the snag by yanking on the rod, creating a series of musical bursts, each one the sound of the taut line vibrating in the wind.  I reach my hand into the slime and tear my hooks off the seaweed and cast again.  Each cast brings another snag, and each snag brings more music.  Jonah and I head towards the far end of pond that is much less dense.  As he gets up to switch to the rowing seat, the boat rocks, and I cast while my side of the boat works its way down.  I cast towards the shore, for the water there has less seaweed but a higher risk of a tree snag, an even worse problem. I reel in my line but turn away as the lure comes closer to the top loop of my rod.  Just before the hook emerges from the water, I am yanked back into position to tighten my drag so the fish doesn’t get away.  Jonah comes to my side to watch me reel in a routine bass, but I know from the yanking and the aggression that this is a pickerel.  We smile as the fish is brought onto the boat but frown when we can’t see the lure.  We open the brim of the pickerel’s razor sharp mouth only to see more line.  Jonah and I look at each other and curse at the fish for swallowing my hook—we know it won’t survive.  Blood emerges from the gills and mixes with the slime to form a red Vaseline coating on the bottom of the green metal boat.  We peer farther and farther down into the fish’s mouth in between its thrashing.  We see the blue lure—all three hooks dug in deep—in the far back of the pickerel’s throat and reach for the special pliers we brought for one of these emergency situations.  The pliers are six inches long, and we insert more than half of the tool to try and retrieve the lure.  At first, the fish begins a beat with the thump of its tail, but after a minute of prodding in its mouth, the pickerel’s intermittent flailing slows, and each time the fish is still, we shoot even farther down into the back of the fish’s throat.  We watch it throb from the pain that fish “don’t feel,” and we watch its consistent stream of blood mix with the slime it no longer produces.  One hook at a time, we retrieve the lure.  We look down at the fish and gently place it into the water and flow it through the top three inches of the pond to allow the water to pass through its bloody gills.  The fish keeps pulsing, and we keep hoping it will jolt away from the boat.  It floats in the seaweed for a moment and then whimpers away slowly.  I doubt it will survive.

Today my friends and I find a new place to fish.  It’s easier to access from the road, and it’s well known for having copious amounts of fish.  We cast and catch and cast and catch all day long, but because every fish is smaller than a hand, I switch to a larger lure to ensure a larger bite.  After about ten minutes with no luck, I feel the slightest twitch on my line.  I yank my rod up, thinking a large bass just nibbled my bait, but with one pull, a five-inch baby bass shoots out of the water and makes my line go slack.  It flies through the air and plops in the shallows a few feet away from me.  I scramble to catch up the line that I had just lost, and when I pull in the fish I know from the first instant that it has no hope.  One of the smallest fish in the lake swallowed one of my largest lures.  I turn to my friends and explain to them that this happens sometimes, but that the fish definitely won’t make it.  It was a few of my friends’ first time fishing, so they hurry to huddle around me to see the death of the fish, but before they are all in position, I take my knife and slice through the fish’s spine under its gill opening to ensure they aren’t witnesses to the murder.  The one-inch tail curls up, its lips start creasing, and when I finish the job, I pinch my fingers to probe in and retrieve my lure at the back of its throat.

With these two horrific fishing experiences, why would this activity be even the slightest bit appealing to a nature-loving, pacifist vegetarian like myself?  Why do I turn a blind eye to the suffering with only curiosity and amusement as motivation?  Of course, the act of fishing isn’t only about catching fish—it’s also about the scenery around the body of water in which you’re casting.  My fondest memories of fishing are not restricted to feeling weight on the other side of my line, but rather rely on where I am and whom I’m with.

My family is in the small town of Vik, Iceland when we decide to try to fish.  My mom, another vegetarian, absolutely loves fishing with me—she won’t touch the fish or even the rod, but she enjoys finding a fresh, scenic body of water just as much as I do.  We come completely unprepared, so we ask the owner of the hotel where we can buy a cheap fishing rod.  In the most Icelandic fashion, he not only gives us directions to the gas station that sells collapsible telescope rods that fold up into themselves, but also leads us to his house so he can hand us two pairs of his army-green waders.  We thank him, pack into the car, and start our journey past a lonely church, through hay fields, onto grass, and into a huge glacial crater consisting of only electric green grass and cobalt blue water.  Though I don’t know the name at the time, the lake is called Kleifarvatn and is the largest of its kind on the entire peninsula.  When we reach the shore in our rental car, we step out into a massive swarm of gnats that accumulated near the water’s edge.  Ignoring them, my brother and I slide on the two clunky waders, and I ask to use my father’s belt to hold mine up.  I wade ten feet into the ice-cold lake and cast and cast and cast.  We fish for hours with no luck, but get the tiniest window of thrill when I land a small lake trout.  This fish is in incredibly important to me, not only because of the location and the journey it took us on, but because it is a species that I have never been able to see in person, let alone catch on a line.

So why would someone completely capable of obtaining protein elsewhere choose to string transparent line through five holes on a stick and rotate their wrist for hours for a bite?  Is it for the taste?  Personally, I fish because I’m curious—curious about how another species lives.  Curious to catch a glimpse of a new species, and to be able to have control of its life: I can let it live or I can let it die, but at root of this curiosity is hope—hope of something new, something different, and something fleeting.  Wondering why I endorse this cruel, torturous activity whose sole premise is to trick unsuspecting fish into biting on a sharp hook that contains a replica of the food they need to survive makes me question whether I should be fishing at all, especially considering the fact that I don’t even eat them, but in wondering, I realize that my hope to be among the fish is even more enticing than my hope of catching a fish.  Some salmon will live most of their lives lives feeding at sea just so they can be fat enough to work their way up the same river in which they were born—growing hungry as they navigate past grizzly bears, humans, and waterfalls—just to spawn their eggs in their little familiar hospital and then die at the foot of the bank.  That is what fishing is all about: hope.  Fishermen all have that same obsession with fish and the way they swim, and fishermen all fish in hopes of becoming closer to this mysterious, resilient species.  Something about practicing a craft that you know you’ll never master because your target is so secretive is not only enticing, but addictive.  But a fisherman’s hope does not stop there: everything they do is influenced by their will to understand the animal they are searching for—hoping you’ll find a good spot, hoping you’ll get a bite, hoping you’ll catch a fish, hoping the music on your line comes from a heavy and clean catch instead of a snag, and for me, hoping the fish lives once it’s caught.