Fishing for Truth

It is not that I have an aversion to fishing or even fishermen. What I have is an aversion to inflicting pain and suffering on an animal for pleasure. If tomorrow we awake to the world seen in John Milius' Red Dawn (Wolverines!) and I find myself needing to fish, hunt, or employ any traditional survival skills, I would survive. I think these are valuable skills worth learning, I'm glad I possess them, and I would certainly pass them along to my progeny.

My aversion is to "catch and release" and "trophy fishing" and fishing for "sport." My aversion is to anyone whose smile grows larger in direct proportion to the animals' fight to survive. In my experience that's most fishermen. Sure, there are those who are out there strictly, reverentially, and responsibly taking only what they need to sustain themselves or their family. This I have no problem with.

I grew up in North Carolina where fishing is a significant portion of the local culture. I can remember all the people who, as I once did, went fishing for bluegill using a beetle spinner and 2# test line. It wasn't about finding a fish to eat (not much on a bluegill), it was about the "thrill of the kill." They used 2# test line to make the catch more challenging and to enjoy the feeling of a proportionally bigger fight. The bigger the fight the animal puts up, the more stress the animal endures, the more pleasure is derived from the experience.

What I see as far more commonplace and equally tragic, especially dockside here in FL, is the conflation of catch size (either number or physical size) with self-worth, and quite often, virility. This behavior is so widely entrenched culturally that it is accepted practically without question and anyone daring speak out against it, as I am now, is inevitably labeled a "left-wing, liberal, commie, tree-hugging, socialist, wacko," who is out of touch, and even worse perhaps, "out of the mainstream."

I'm sad to say most seem to disagree that this kind of behavior is disgusting, immoral, perverted, uncivilized, aberrant, and utterly unjustifiable. But in a sense I gladly acknowledge and accept this disagreement. As J. Krishmamurthi has noted, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

D