Benefits of Fishing

Fishing is a romantic idea that recently lodged in my brain. It seemed like the opposite of my hectic, too busy, crazy life. When you’re fishing, you just let the fish come to you, I thought to myself. So, my significant other and I bought ourselves some poles.

Mine is the basic number with a little rosy pink to it. You just push the thumb button and cast away.

His is the more complicated, rugged one. He says he got it because it’s less likely to tangle and fail, but he added that it requires more skill to use, emphasizing that I should stick with my basic rig. I’m pretty sure he chose it to impress me. I’ll let you decide whether you want to be impressed without giving away my own judgment. <wink>

Then I bought myself the perfect hat for fishing. We both needed to be licensed in our state, and finally we needed a permit for the lake we had in mind. One permit covers the permit owner and a guest. Completely ready now (this took weeks!), we set our first fishing date for the very next day.

Then we checked the weather and saw that it would lightly rain, maybe rain a little harder with thunder and lightning at times. Hey, fish are already wet, so it’s not like we’d be unsuccessful, right? Besides, we were excited. Getting ready had taken forever. So we went fishing anyway.

The beginning was full of exuberant optimism. I aimed my first cast far into the deep and ended up quite nearby in some shallow rocks. His first cast got stuck in the rocks, and he had to break his line, leaving a lure behind in order to free himself.

Undaunted and picking up skills, we cast a few more times, and we frequently felt little “nibbles” as we reeled in our lines. The “nibbles” tugged and gave way. This turned out to be algae, which we had to clean off, so fish could find our lures again.

Really getting into the swing of things now, he swung what should have been a mighty cast, and it never plopped into the water. Eyes tracing the line, we discovered that he’d snagged himself in a tree behind us. This took several minutes to untangle. He rejected my assistance and seems to have taken a break to snap this photo of me…

Despite my umbrella and awesome hat, I got a wee bit wet from all this. He went without an umbrella or hat and was more or less soaked. It was a bit chilly (when have we ever said that this summer??) and we went home earlier than we’d planned just to warm up.

All told, we spent more time preparing to fish than we spent actually fishing that day.

But we certainly succeeded at one thing. We slowed down for an afternoon of quiet and reconnecting with nature. It was so refreshing, I slept more deeply that night than I had in a long while.

Did we have fish for dinner? No. But we’re definitely going fishing again, even if the result is exactly the same.

What are your favorite slow-down activities? How did it go the first time you tried it? Bonus: If you answer that “reading” is how you relax, please recommend your favorite authors, especially what you’re reading right now!