To Fish … or Not to Fish

Fishing. It’s a sport or pastime that appeals to many baby boomers … but not all, as BoomerCafé co-founder and editor Greg Dobbs explains …

If you’re a fisherman — actually, I’m told these days the word is “fisherperson” — you might want to stop reading right here. You’re not going to like the rest of this.

Here’s why: I think fishing is crazy.

Aside from the profits of pulling in the catch I enjoy at any good restaurant, I can’t see why anyone wants to go fishing. True, I grew up in a city, so you could attribute my attitude to the fact that fishing wasn’t a big part of my childhood. But that city was San Francisco, the “City by the Bay,” which might make you think that as city-boys go, I’d be into fishing. But I’m not. I still think it’s crazy.

Case in point: among other things that I produce for the high definition television network HDNet, I cover the space program. That means I’m in Florida a lot! Our production crews and I always stay in Cocoa Beach, one of the closest communities to the Kennedy Space Center, and my one piece of personal pleasure whenever I can squeeze it in is to get up early in the morning and rent a retro bike from a nearby surf shop — no suspension, no gears, and the kind of foot brake we had when we were kids — and ride along the sand from Cocoa Beach to Cape Canaveral. It’s always pretty much the same route: 5-6 miles up, 5-6 miles back.

And regularly, I’ve got to ride under the taut lines of the fishermen. Not that the fishermen are actually holding their poles; in fact they’re not even real close to them. No, they’re doing what I’d be doing, reclining in a beach chair watching the surf. These aren’t wrinkled seniors and they’re not soft-cheeked kids; the best I can tell is, they are, shall we say, “leading edge” baby boomers, just like me. But the difference between them and me is, I’d be watching the surf without a care in the world. They’re watching for a fish.

That’s what I’ve never understood about the sport. If someone goes fishing to be near a stunning mountain stream, I say, why not just go sit by the stream without the fishing pole?!? Who needs sharp hooks and smelly bait to bask in the beauty of the mountains? Same thing goes for fishing from a boat. For me, it’s about being in the boat with the calm sway of the waves and the cool breeze of the water … it’s not about what you’re likely to pull up from beneath it!

Mind you, I guess I understand the appeal of attracting a wily trout in a crystalline creek: choosing the right fly, finessing the line so you don’t lose your prize. And I can understand, even if I don’t appreciate, the thrill of fighting that fish you hooked from the back of a deep sea yacht. But that brings me back to the fishermen on the beach in Cape Canaveral. There just can’t be a whole lot of skill involved and if there’s not a whole lot of skill, how can there be a whole lot of satisfaction? I mean, they call it “surf fishing.”

They plant their poles in the sand, sometimes in a supportive plastic tube and sometimes just in the sand, and wait. If something tugs on the line, they pull it in. Of course they assure me it’s not nearly so simple as that and maybe it’s not, but I’ve watched and I gotta tell you, that’s all I see. Tug, pull, then yank out the hook.

So why do they do it? For the food?? I don’t think so, because for the couple of hundred dollars they spend on rod and reel — and many have two, three, four rods feeding lines into the water at once — they could buy plenty of fresh fish at the local supermarket. To be sure, sometimes they pull out a fish that’s a good foot to a foot-and-a-half long; the record catch in Florida of the most common fish they hook here — something called the Black Drum — was more than 90 pounds. I never even heard of a Black Drum before I started coming down here and therefore certainly wouldn’t eat one! Anyway, what I usually see these guys pull out of the ocean is typically about as long as a tube of toothpaste; I don’t think that comes anywhere close to 90 pounds! It’s hardly big enough to take to the taxidermist.

And if you’re not yet convinced that fishing is crazy, how about the guy I came across the morning I wrote this?! There I was, just like I always am, riding right along the edge of the surf where the sand is firm and the mist is cool, and I come to a row of three rods planted in the beach. One scrawny little fish has just been hooked, and the guy who hooked it has just pulled it out of the water. So it’s flapping around on the sand just as I’m riding under the rods….and that’s when this guy screams, “DON’T RUN OVER HIM.” Do you see where this is going? This fisherman has just stuck a barbed hook into little fishy’s cheek, then pulled him out of his survivable environment so he can suffocate in ours, and this guy’s afraid I’m going to hurt the fish! Crazy?

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