Not Catching Fish

Not catching fish on a sunny day is a wonderful thing to do. You can sit on a nice warm dock on a nice sunny day in a nice shady, grassy park for hours not catching fish.

People walk by, they see someone pursuing an odd goal. To pull a large, awfully wriggly and foul smelling critter from a lake where it was moments ago happily nibbling on banana bread would seem pointless. This is however a misguided perception. The goal is not to catch a large, awfully wriggly and foul smelling critter, but to spend a nice afternoon not doing this.

When you catch a fish, you pay for your brief moment of excitement by having to get the fish off the hook, decide whether or not to keep it, put the fish on stringer, take the fish home, gut the fish, figure out how to prepare the fish and then actually cook it. If you don't catch a fish, you get to enjoy a nice afternoon appearing to have a sense of purpose.

An acquaintance asks you where you are headed, you reply "to the dock to sit there all day in the sun not doing anything", you're friend tells you that it sounds wonderful while secretly thinking "now here is a guy with nothing important to do". You tell that same friend you are going fishing and your friend thinks "now here is a guy with enough time on his hands to know what he is doing". Fishing is the perfect alibi, few suspect your true intentions and none question them. The only remaining hurdle is to not catch anything.

I propose using banana bread. Then again it landed me a great big carp today, and a 6 hour siesta in the sun.