The title is taken from C S Lewis I think, although it has been used multiple times on multiple people. I like the sound of it and the message – old books can be quite underrated these days. First of all, there is something purely of age, as people like old things. At the very least withstanding the test of time shows that there is a bit of quality. But mostly, if one is interested in humanity and human nature, it is a small view in the minds of past people.
History taught in Romania schools can be very limited from my point of view, concentrating on some major events which are considered notable. It is mostly rulers, battles, and lots of dates to be remembered for no particular reason. Also dates must be constantly converted from Julian to Gregorian calendars, because why the hell not. As a result most children don’t like history class and often do not learn history at all. I like history, but learned most of it outside school. School history annoyed me like it did most of my mates. And I always liked to read what was known for a given time period about how people lived and though, the laws the culture the economy. Not whoever was the big boss.
Old books can help a lot in understanding past people, sometimes more than histories. History books, while valuable, can be highly biased. Most chroniclers were paid by this king or that lord and wrote to please the patron. There is much boasting, exaggeration, and general nonsense.
Now, while it may be interesting to have actual old books, dusty ancient tomes of forgotten lore (I just wanted to use the word lore) around, I do not have any. But there is project Guttenberg and a new invention of the ebook reader. So making due.
Case in point:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/683
Many or more accurately most old books that were written and survived to our modern days are religious or philosophical texts, myths or epics, chronicles of whole nations. But once in a while there is a book that is none of that stuff. But a quiet book, more reduced in scope but not in insight. It is simply on how to fish and live well, a fragment of Merry Olde England, of the 1650s, give or take. Which is why I like it, being a non-fishermen and all. Fishing, to be blunt is boring. It takes a long time and you don’t catch anything. But it can be of use if catching is not the point, but it is more of a form of meditation. I like to stare at a lake or river sometimes, to empty my thoughts, but usually I skip the rod in the water bit.
Now where was I? Right, back to the book. The author is one Izaak Walton, an innkeeper ‘s son by origin, an ironmonger by trade, and a writer by vocation. He lived through the English Civil War, a somewhat hectic and troubled time – oft covered by the standard histories and history classes. You learn of the Roundheads and their 7 game series against the Cavaliers, you learn dates and battles, laws and beheadings. Of Cromwell (MVP) and parliaments, and maybe what happened in Ireland. But what do you learn of the correct way to snag a trout or cook a chub, I ask you?
After said hectic times, old Izaak retired to the countryside, and spoke about the slow life, calm, quiet, contemplative. Fly fishing was an art and a form of quiet meditation. Also, to paraphrase the philosopher Ron Swanson, you get to kill something.
The book is, mind you, a bit pastoral fantasy, a walk through the countryside of the time that is more than slightly idealized.
There really is a lot about fish. Which time of year a certain type bites, what bait to use, how to make artificial lures (apparently, duck feathers work differently from pheasant feathers.) He talks also of over-fishing and environmental protection, and references the tragedy of the commons – a problem, he states, with rivers being that which belongs to all belongs to none. He also covers the subtle difference between making and enforcing legislation– there were types of fishing nets that were illegal to fish with since 1400s, but still were sold in most markets.
The book is in the form of a conversation, and it is not, to be fair, what one would call an easy read, if one does not like the style. It is the type of conversation where many lines are actually long speeches, so it is not necessarily a natural conversation, unless that is how people conversed at the time. The main characters are the fisherman Piscator and the hunter Venator meet early in the morning while walking from the city towards the countryside, and are glad of company and conversation, as the road can be lonely. The plot –so to speak- is Piscator teaching Venator angling, after the hunter was somewhat dismissive of the fisherman’s pastime, considering his passion more noble and interesting. By the way of conversation on the road he is won over by the angler, who begins teaching craft and life philosophy (and why otters should be made extinct, as they eat too much fish).
Throughout the book they travel the English countryside, looking for good bits of river and good clean houses, with honest landladies. A good house had clean rooms, clean bed-sheets smelling of lavender, and the landlady should be able dress (as in cook) your fish and make good ale. Ale was essential back then and not made industrially. Each house made its own ale. These houses were not the large inns of fantasy literature or RPGs, but smaller affairs with a few rooms to rent, and each traveller knew a few good ones.
As always, not all fish were appreciated in 1600s England, the trout and eel being considered the best, the chub one of the worst. This is where cooking- how to dress your fish- became important, as almost any fish could become a good meal if you knew how. The key, as far as I understood it reading the book, was lots of butter – a quarter pound or more – and some fragrant herbs, maybe some wine in the sauce. But mostly butter.
For each fish covered, chub or perch, trout or carp, eel or pike, the standard chapter tells you when it is in season, how to catch it and how to cook it. Maybe braised in wine, baked in the oven should one be available, or roasted on a spit, often stuffed with herbs and mushrooms and oysters. Do remember the quarter pound of butter though.
I liked reading about the European carp, as it is a very widely eaten fish in present day Romania, and some of the things in the book still apply. It is mentioned that the fish caught in running water is better than from still water. At Romanian fish mongers, the price and quality ranks are similar, wild caught carp is better than farmed, river caught is better than lake/pond fish. The best is considered the Danube carp, usually at least twice more expensive the farmed one. Another thing casually mentioned in the book as anecdote is how Jews eat the carp roe because their religion forbids them sturgeon roe. I understand from this that Englishmen did not eat carp roe, but present day Romanians do, usually mixed with mayo and onion. Althoug pike roe is proffered for this preparation.
In the book mister Walton speaks highly of good ale, but also on the importance of moderation. He usually has one glass in the morning as his breakfast drink, and he will not drink another until dinner (midday meal), and maybe one or two more in the evening, with good company and good conversation. In the beginning of the book, the travelers plan a stop for the morning pint at a good, honest house – you needed to know of one nearby anywhere you were – before heading to the fishing grounds.
Anyway I shouldn’t go on about it too much. I recommend the book, it is free and available, and so give it a read if it sounds good to you, might be an interesting view of 350 years ago, give or take.
Comments
139 responses to “On reading old books – The Compleat Angler”
apparently, duck feathers work differently from pheasant feathers
Indeed. Ducks, being waterfowl, have oils on their fathers that peasants lack. One will make a dry, or floating, fly, while the other will make a wet, or sinking, fly. There was a fly fisherman in the nursing home I worked in back when I was a teenager. I had a lot of long conversations about fly tying and fishing in general with him. There is a lot to it. I still can’t cast a fly rod worth a damn, but I make some really good flies.
I had a hard time catching decent fish in the Danube Delta, and there’s a lot of fish there, so fishing is not my strong suit
I’m a perfectly competent angler, just not from a British perspective. I prefer catching “rough” fish, with a spin caster. The gentlemanly art of trout fishing on a fly eludes me, but I’m happy to spend my afternoons pulling up catfish, crappies, and pickerel.
As a kid we used to vacation in the mountains next to a very fast mountain river full of wild rainbow trout. For me it was almost impossible to catch I couldn’t make the difference between fish the the water current. If I had a couple a day I was lucky. But some local could catch a half dozen trout in like 20 minutes in the right spots. Quite tasty, freshly caught mountain trout
I mostly remember dad braining trout on a rock. Then forgetting my horror as soon as he started frying them.
I’ve never had any luck with fly fishing. I’m guessing it’s a combination of poor technique/tools and generally being blissfully ignorant. Lol.
Fishing on a lake, though…
Also, to paraphrase the philosopher Ron Swanson, you get to kill something.
*applause*
and why otters should be made extinct
Jesse hardest hit?
But seriously – this is a very high quality review. I look forward to more of its kind from you.
Thanks.
Fortunately the LA otter subspecies is in no danger
Sounds good – thank you – I just downloaded an 1869 reprint edition which (they say) is a copy of the 16th century original).
I think one reason the rulers-and-wars version of history is so boring is that they don’t explain how the rulers and wars fit into what normal people were doing. The best historians give this context – King Doofus the Retard issues a decree and the people of Village X have to deal with the consequences – generally bad, because even if they’re not interested in politics, politics is interested in them.
Then sometimes someone – generally not a king, more likely an enterpreneur or whatnot – comes up with an idea and it improves people’s lives.
“The main characters are the fisherman Piscator and the hunter Venator meet early in the morning while walking from the city towards the countryside, and are glad of company and conversation, as the road can be lonely.”
I think the dialogue format was popular at the time, going back to the Greeks.
Today, they have ads on the radio where there’s a couple people talking about the product, or arguing about it, or in general getting the listener’s attention. So maybe they’re using the same principle as the authors of those dialogue books, with a shorter time frame in which to do it.
Yes but it was the kind of dialogue where is not an exchange of short lines but one can talk for pages before the other answers, because it was more exposition than dialogue. Some people find it difficult to read due to this fact.
I found it relaxing, because it was talking basically about the good quiet country river life, wind in the willows and such.
I don’t know if Plato coined the phrase “straight man,” but the dialogue would often have a straight man to ask the questions or raise the issues the reader might be thinking about, and then there’s a stand-in for the author (Socrates in Plato’s case) who explains things for the reader.
He was an old white dude, so probably cis-hetero, too.
Yeah, but he was Greek.
(ducks)
Wheat… fields of wheat… cream of wheat….
Then sometimes someone – generally not a king, more likely an enterpreneur or whatnot – comes up with an idea and it improves people’s lives.
I think this gets at what makes for good history. To me, history should be the story of how we got to where we are. And the sad reality is most people throughout history don’t really play a figure in that story. The modern trend of talking about the life of an illiterate 12th century peasant woman doesn’t really tell you all that much. She was born, she lived, and she died. And if none of that happened, our lives probably wouldn’t be all that different. Someone else would have been born, lived and died. On the other hand, the traditional history of King Doofus the Retard rarely tells us much either. Mostly, Doofus is just puffing his chest out while standing amid what was going on anyway. Looking at the old James Burke Connections series, you got a much better understanding of why we are who we are. And it rarely involved either of the two.
I really liked that show.
Yeah, same here. I think it’s a pretty libertarian theory of history. Here’s a synopsis:
What he’s talking about is, essentially, emergent order and non-predictable consequences.
I think one reason the rulers-and-wars version of history is so boring is that they don’t explain how the rulers and wars fit into what normal people were doing. The best historians give this context…
Context is, of course, very important to understanding history, but I think the real reason textbook history is boring is a focus on facts rather than narrative. I find that history written as a story, rather than a list of events, is the most engaging history to read. The important details shouldn’t be ignored, but unimportant facts (such as kings who did nothing or minor wars) can be ignored while colorful detail should be added in its place. When a person relates a story of something that happened in their own life, they don’t give a play-by-play of the chronology or focus on the mundane: rather, they give the meat of the tale spiced up with flavorful details. Relating history should be the same.
But mostly butter.
Some truths are eternal.
This chick gets it
She’s racist tho yo.
Delicious delicious racist.
butter and maple syrup are life.
I have a growler of maple syrup in the cupboard.
I read that as “I have a grower or maple syrup in the cupboard.”
dammit; of not or
That would be better.
+
Mmmmm butter.
Is that fisherman as sith lord? Looks like he is trying to “use the force” on that fish.
I think it’s Darth Plagueis before the hair loss.
That’s just Ol’ Ben.
Yeessss… let the butter flow through you!
This is funny.
Cream churns to butter, butter leads to the dark side?
FearMilk is the path tothe dark sideflavor.FearMilk leads toangercream.AngerCream leads tohatebutter.Hatebutter leads tosufferinghappiness.yay!
Legit.
“Fishing, to be blunt is boring. It takes a long time and you don’t catch anything.”
*sigh*
Let me know if you ever make it to Louisiana Pie.
I’ve enjoyed fishing and not catching anything. Catfishing is my fave…set it and forget it.
I think the catfish we have in Romania are a different subtype then southern US, but there are some big uns in the Danube delta.
Well’s catfish are in the Danube, as opposed to the blue shovelhead catfish that w have in America. The Well’s gets a hell of a lot bigger.
Dammit, blue or shovelhead. They are two different species.
We have always called them flatheads and I think they are the tastier of the two species.
You’re in Arkansas, I’m in Pennsylvania. Probably just a regional difference.
But yes, they are tastier than blue catfish.
Around here we have half a dozen species of catfish and some of them do get pretty big but yeah, not like the Wells does. Those things are as big as cows.
Off course the prize of Danube delta fishing is Beluga Sturgeon, but it is quite illegal to catch as it is endangered, but some are still caught.
I saw that. Holy shit the largest one a 20 foot long freshwater fish? Two and a half tons? That is hard to imagine.
And if female a chance of many pounds of caviar which retail for a lot of money per ounce
Also lotsa local pike subspecies which is fished for using a metal lure which is called “spoon” in Romanian (well not spoon but lingura, it translates as spoon in American)
Spoons are used in America for pikes as well. The northern pike is a holearctic species, and while the Romanian version is slightly different they are almost identical. We also have pickerel, which are smaller, and muskelunge, which are basically pikes on steroids. You won’t find then down in Louisiana though, too far south. However, they have alligator gar.
Thing about pike is that it is cooked differently from other fish, stuffed pike being preferred. Basically it takes some skill but you take the entire skin off, you then boil the flesh and separate the meat from bones. Pike bones are considered dangerous if accidentally swallowed, hard and sharp. The meat is then mixed with mushrooms and spices and such, bone free, and stuffed back into the skin then oven roasted.
Pickerel have the same type of bones. I always just pan fry them, but you do have to be very careful when filleting then to make sure you don’t miss a bone.
Might look up a recipe for stuffing them like you described, sounds interesting.
Here smaller gar as prepared in a very similar manner and for the same reason. We dont put the fish back in the skin, we mix the meat with onion, garlic and cornbread or white breadcrumbs and then rolled into patties or balls. People just refer to them as gar balls.
Another fish we do that to is the freshwater drum we call the gou. Some people wont even keep them because they have a strong oily fishy taste. I bake them then mix up like gar balls but in patties then I fry them. That seems to take care of the taste.
Alligator gar are…interesting fish. I dont keep them unless they are over 5 feet. When you get a big one you are in for a hell of a fight. I carry a pistol so I can shoot the thing before hauling it into the boat. No way in hell I am going to sit in a boat with a live one.
They are very delicious.
I have caught them, but mostly on accident. Most consider them trash fish. How do you get through their skin? Every one I have ever handled makes me thing I would need an angle grinder to cut it open.
And you’re right about being in the boat with a big one. Hell no. That mouth is nasty.
Not an angle grinder sheeesh.
You use a reciprocating saw. Start at the tail and go up the back cutting out a one inch wide strip all the way to the back of the head. Then take your hands inside the skin on either side and the fish will easily separate from the skin. You should use rubber gloves. If it is a female and has any eggs you shouldn’t touch them at all. They are highly poisonous. Lift the fish out and gut it letting the guts and any eggs fall away from the meat. Don’t let your dog get near those eggs. Hose it and your hands down thoroughly. If it is a big enough fish you dont have to worry about bones. Cut it into roasts of about three to four vertebra. Wrap in foil with chopped onion, garlic and lemon pepper and toss on the pit for about 20 minutes indirect heat.
The taste and texture is very similar to lean white pork
Damn, they are poisonous.
Whoa. I am surprised they lived. Yes, gar eggs are very poisonous. Don’t even let them touch your skin. Those fools actually ate them.
Suthen on his last fishing trip.
Catfishing is my fave
I know, I live for the look in their face when we meet for the first time IRL.
Probably gonna be a while, but I’ll keep that in mind
In fairness Suthen, any activity can be made exciting by adding man eating reptiles.
Cop fired for running over and kicking suspect in head while suspect was being held face down on ground. FOP outraged.
http://nbc4i.com/2017/07/10/city-of-columbus-fires-zachary-rosen-the-officer-seen-kicking-suspect-in-head/
WTF, he was totally subdued. Why did the blue ape need to stomp on his face? What a dick.
He was involved in a shooting a year earlier. Seemed legit at the time. Emptied his mag.
http://nbc4i.com/2017/04/10/officers-in-henry-green-shooting-say-they-feared-for-their-lives/
I’m glad he got fired. that is good. This shit will never stop until cops are held liable for their actions completely. He should be fired and charged with assault.
Otters should be made extinct. I can understand how an angler could have that sentiment.
Once while diving the Sante Fe River in Florida I watched some otters. They were swimming upstream towards me so I sat on the bottom to watch them. They are incredible swimmers. They effortless dart here and there with barely any movement. As they approached me they passed close to a school of bream. As they went by the school each of the three of them reached out and grabbed a fish with as much difficulty as you have getting a beer from the fridge. They casually took one bite and dropped the fish.
Those were probably white European otters, since the Native American otters are known to let no part of the animal go to waste.
Lots of wild animals have been infected with whiteness. They are lazy and wasteful like that. If there is an abundance of food they will only eat the best parts. Watch squirrels eat corn sometime, or worse get into your pear tree.
I’ve had deer go through the garden taking a bite or two from each pumpkin they happen across. Bastards.
They’re voracious little bastards. They can annihilate a stocked pond in no time and they give new meaning to the term “selective diner”.
If you’re worried about catching fish then you’re doing it wrong, and when I say wrong, I’m not taking about not catching fish.
That was a very enjoyable read Pie.
Good Article. I haven’t trout fished in a long time. My uncle and his wife bought a cabin on the white river around Flippin, Arkansas several months ago. It’s about 3 hours from where I live. I haven’t been up there yet. When I get some free time, I need to get together with them and do some trout fishing.
Just about anywhere on the White is good fishing. Is your uncle anywhere close to the Spider Creek area?
I’m really not sure. I haven’t been there yet. It’s somewhere around Flippin is all I know.
OT: A little too much Molson, perhaps?
I’m sure you guys can come up with funnier digs on Canada than I can.
Dude. No one likes a tattletale.
Forgot to add a teaser.
First Russians buzzing our cruisers, now even the Canadians are giving us shit.
I don’t really understand the purpose of the scare quotes. Do you?
Pilot was jonesing for poutine and needed to get in quick.
All hail Canada, populariser of “All Dressed” chips.
O Cana-duh!
The key, as far as I understood it reading the book, was lots of butter – a quarter pound or more – and some fragrant herbs, maybe some wine in the sauce. But mostly butter.
Generally, still good advice to this day.
Nice job, Pie. I’ve started the book a few times, but never finished. I will now.
I’ve done a lot of fly fishing, including trout, but my absolute favorite is river smallmouth on a light setup. They fight like beasts and the fly rod makes it more challenging.
Fly fishing isnt suitable for this area but we do have bass fishing which is sort of the spiritual equivalent. I love bass fishing. Some people think it is tough but that is only because they dont know what they are doing. They think of the baits the way people think of dog toys; it looks fun to you so, wait, why is the dog playing with the package and not the toy?
The whole point of the bait is to make it look and behave like things that bass love to eat. Worms dont jet through the water. Put your plastic worm on a brush-proof hook and let it crawl across the bottom at a snails pace near cover. Reel about half turn per second or even slower. You can catch bass at will if you master that.
I also use jointed minnows. Using jerky tugs you can make it behave exactly like a wounded minnow. Bang, you are getting a strike.
Bass fishing is favorite. I have had the most with rubber worms doing mostly what you suggest.
Pie, if you can lay hands on some of Robert Ruark’s work – especially ‘The Old Man and the Boy’, you might like it. I grew up reading Ruark’s stories and it gave me a love for the outdoors that’s stayed with me from childhood.
Completely apropos of nothing, but one of the “oldest print books” i have floating around is History of the United States in Words of One Syllable (1880-something)
Its hilarious. It was intended as a primary-school text kids in the hinterlands i think… the bulk of the book is devoted to the Revolution and recent Civil War, with more than you might expect on the White Man’s relations to the Red Man. (at that point rather sour)
I highly recommend buying a copy on Ebay, which i’ve seen a few times (for like $20, you can’t go wrong). It can make for a fun conversation piece over drinks. Some LOL moments
also apropos of nothing: My favorite “Super Old Book” (and one of my favorite books of all time), available on Gutenberg but also still in print, is
“Simplicius Simplicissimus” (or “the Adventues os Simplicissimus)
(pdf here)
http://la.utexas.edu/users/arens/07-345/simp1&2.pdf
from the wikipedia summary =
My review = “if you liked Voltaire’s ‘Candide’, you’ll love this”
Also apropos of nothing, a few years ago I inherited a book that my father had as a child, which apparently didn’t influence the career choices he made as an adult. It’s a 1959 Popular Mechanics publication, with a palpable Cold War intensity to it that I like to imagine in the voice of a 1950s television announcer when I read it. It’s called The Boy Engineer and there are even chapters on nuclear and rocket engineering.
First two pages of the introduction are classic:
Or you may sit at a desk, and type on a computer.
Waiting for the sweet release of death.
Wait, is that why engineers do things like design a car battery that must be removed through the wheel well? It’s not shit work, but ennui?
Explains a lot.
Removing the battery through the opened hood was not on the spec sheet.
Maybe designing shit like that gives them a thrill for a change. A little schadenfreude perhaps.
Security cameras are racist
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/11/bart-withholding-video-attacks-concern-stereotypes/
being mobbed, beaten, and robbed in broad-daylight in a public place = relatively minor
perpetuating false stereotypes
uhhhhhhh… if it’s actually happening, it’s not really false.
If there are too many real life examples it would perpetuate false stereotypes. False ones.
Oh. San Fransisco useful idiot. Now it makes sense…or am I perpetuating a false stereotype?
There’s also the absurd claim about: “regularly feed the news media video of crimes on our system”
these are *highly unusual events*. They’re trying to say that they release ‘too much’ video already, and adding these to the (nonexistent) pile would somehow be one-toke over the time.
the reality is that they are highly unusual high-profile events, not the sensationalizing of otherwise normal occurrences.
If the statement from the BART PR people is useful for anything, it is a remarkable case study in how much bullshit you can stuff into a few sentences when you’re trying to politically massage-reality. It has layers upon layers of utter horseshit. They should teach it in rhetoric-classes.
Finally, someone has the bravery to say it out loud.
Though, they have basically already told us what are on the camera feeds:
By not releasing the video they are preventing the perpetrators from being identified and the crime to continue. I wonder if any of the victims are riders of color. I would think that the riders of color that are being unfairly affected are the law abiding ones.
This is how useful idiocy works. Infest society with enough of them and society ceases to function.
We’re not going to show you which poc to beware of so you should probably beware of them all. That helps.
+1 equality.
It’s not an unfair characterization if it’s FUCKING TRUE!
That might, indeed.
Okay, there’s the point that everyone has already raised, yes, it’s physically, actually true.
But, I’d raise another point. Do they really think no one is going to draw any conclusions about the culprits given the fact that they’re doing the cover up?
I can neither confirm nor deny that I was sleeping with your sister last weekend.
My sister is dead. I don’t think her widower is going to take terribly kindly to your digging up her grave.
OT: How sweet.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421133/pope-francis-crucifix-hammer-sickle-communist
Will the evil of communism never end? Really, how many times do we have to go through this shit? How many mass graves before people finally get it?
I thought that marxism and christianity didn’t get along. Is this some new pivot?
Every dictatorial political movement needs its useful idiots.
Yes it does. I have to wonder about the College of Cardinals.
I have to wonder about the College of Cardinals.
Well, they do wear red…
/jk
He is a commie first, pope second. Listening to him talk it’s like he is reading strait off of a list of proggie talking points.
I bang my head into a wall listening to my good Catholic friend defend this bozo. Normally a very rational man, becomes a jibbering mess at any slight against commie-pope.
It just goes to show you, everyone becomes Vox about something.
He’s a fiscally retarded Argentinian first.
A true blue native of the world’s most consistently disappointing economy, where they have no real reason for failure other than their own stupidity and self-pitying attitudes.
Sometimes they get a lot more than they’d like to admit.
That is disgusting.
John Paul II must be spinning in his grave
Wondering how dumb Benedict feels at the moment.
I’m wondering how pissed Jesus is getting.
No more pissed than at any other pope for the last millennia and a half
/Protestant
I should think of the long list of un-Christlike behaviour Christians have committed the Pope being an idiot is actually fairly low on the list.
A drop in the bucket, to be sure.
Both fair points. I’d like to see him come back ah whip some asses, regardless. We need a little wrath of God, I’m thinking.
I mean, even with the Pope’s shitty views, he’s still not a Borgia. Unless Luther was divine intervention (which I’m willing to entertain) you’re out of luck.
Yeah ironic. John Paul II was a one man bulwark against communist tyranny. If Francis had been Pope then, maybe the Catholic church really would have been on the way out, as the liberal intelligensia claimed at the time.
Scruffy’s in the right of it. John Paul was a Pole, historically the killers of many a Red and a bulwark against communism themselves. Argentinians, on the other hand, have wallowed in shitty leftism and a stagnant economy for decades and have never understood cause and effect.
Evo Morales has mushroom hair and he looks like he should be a character in a Super Mario Brothers game.
An important question for the gliberati: I was never a fanatic fisherman, but for most of my life I went fishing at least once a month or so. Not much of a fish eater, so I almost always caught and released (unless I snagged a pompano or a flounder, or on those rare occasions when I went offshore and got a tuna). Years ago, though, I gut-hooked a bluefish pretty badly and, despite my most careful efforts, ended up ripping the poor bastard’s innards up with it bleeding like a fire hydrant. Haven’t been once ever since because thinking about fishing made me feel like crap for killing something I wasn’t interested in eating.
Does that make me a pussy? Inquiring minds want to know!
I’d just have kept it and gave it to a fish eater friend. Win-win, except for the loser fish.
I don’t think so. Respect for life, especially since you weren’t going to eat it, seems reasonable.
There is nothing manly (or whatever the antonym of pussy is) about killing without regard and for no reason. I mean, besides the fact that men have been engaging in the behavior since time immemorial.
Get one of these and get back out there!
Also, I switched long ago to barbless hooks. You’ll miss some fish, but I’d rather have that than tear them up trying to get the hook out. Fight them fast and get them back in the water.
And no, you’re not a pussy, but a sportsman.
Did you kill something you probably shouldn’t have? Sure. But I promise you it’s death fed many other creatures that day. Assuming it wasn’t the last one in the ocean I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.
Chipwooder – No it does not make you a pussy. I can still kill a fish but almost nothing else. Once upon a time I lived to hunt. I have killed just about everything that walks, crawls, flies or swims. A few years ago just in the space of a day I found that I couldn’t bring myself to kill anymore. Ok, wasps, I can kill them. And poisonous snakes (kids play in my yard). Oh, and ticks and fleas…but you get the idea.
No, you aren’t a pussy.