This is probably going to piss off some good ole boys

Yesterday a couple of guys that I work with were talking about fishing when one of them mentions something about a collage that they are fans of. A little while later they mentioned something about being champions, since collage football season is drawing to a close I was under the impression that they were talking about football, but then I realized that their team didn't win a conference championship, hell that team didn't even play in the championship game. Which made me wonder what they were talking about? I then realized that they were still talking about fishing. Since they were near and are pretty decent guys I joined the conversation for a bit to find out more.

One of the guys said that he read on one of this schools bulletin boards that a couple of guys from this school won a championship in fishing. What? So I shot the breeze with them long enough to get one of them to send me a link to the story he was talking about. One of the funny things about this is that these guys were doing some serious chest thumping over winning a fishing contest or what ever they call them.

I had to read this article, there was something inside me that said I must read this article, I don't know what it was but I knew it was going to be great. I found a lot of the article humorous bordering on cocky. Like this quote "when you fish as much as they do, you know when you're going to get a bite". Really, so why do you sit there for HOURS then? I know that dinner is going to come but I don't sit at the dining room table all day. That quote was followed by this gem "You can almost predict it", see the dinner comment above. If that wasn't enough we have, "Like a well-played game of copycat, a good fisherman knows what the fish want and then emulates it with technique and bait". You mean food? Like this animal that you are trying to trick which has a brain the size of a grape at best is going to have such a complex rational thinking structure that it can tell weather the worm on your hook is plastic or not? Ever think maybe they are just hungry? Nice job Aristotle, you fooled an animal which I had as a child that would jump out of the only substance that would keep it alive. Yeah, I had fish that would jump out of their tank, they are highly intelligent creachers.

Then the writer of the article had to chime in with this ground breaking revelation "Fishing is a sport of patterns", like cast then reel it in, cast, reel it in, cast, reel it in? That kind of pattern?

As I kept reading I came across something that sort of pissed me off. In this article I read and then re-read, then walked away, came back and re-re-read this line "won a $14,000 scholarship". You mean to tell me that you can get a scholarship for fishing? For fishing!?!? It's not even a sport, hell it's not even a game. It's … it's… it's just luck! I think that they should call it that, luck. That's all you do is sit there and put something that looks like crap that a fish would eat into the water and wait and hope that a hungry fish comes swimming along. I play a wicked game of Lotto, I wonder if they offer a scholarship for that.

This is probably going to piss off some good ole boys that will more than likely e-mail me starting with "Man, you just don't know. Fishing is …"

I got nothing against fishing but come on now.

Humane?

Earlier this week I was in this three day seminar. During this seminar we had lunch catered each day. As is typical in most seminars, during breaks we all sort of get to know each other if we don't already. Mostly small talk, what do you do for fun, where are you from, have any hobbies, and so on. Usually light hearted and often very comical. Most of the break time during these three days was much the same, except for this break we took just before lunch on the second day. We came to a stopping point and the chit chat begins. The subject of what was for lunch that day came up and we began to comment on the previous days selections. About this time the food was delivered and one of the co-seminarians (is that really a word?) asked the presenter if he knew what time he was going to start back up. He lets her know about when he was planning to start back and asked her why. She mentions that she would like to step out during lunch. And he asked if she would like to have something set aside for her. You could really tell that she didn't want to be put in the spotlight but the rest of the room had gotten quite and was watching the exchange between them, when she casually mentioned that no, she would be fine. The presenter, very politely I might add, asked again if she was sure because she might get hungry. He was being very courteous and actually just trying to make sure that she didn't miss anything. She very nicely mentions that is the very reason why she was going to step out and that she had recently become vegan. Which is totally cool, but you would have thought that she said she was going to go on a shooting spree or something. She was hit with this onslaught of questions about why and how long and on and on and on. To which she would answer and simply state that it was no big deal, but there was nothing that was brought to us that she cared to eat. I mean she was being totally cool about it but you would think she was getting subpoenaed.
Over the course of the questioning the conversation somehow turned to hunting. The presenter said that he could never go hunting and that he just didn't think he could shoot anything, which is fine. Another person even mentioned that they didn't like to think of anything that they have ever eaten as being alive. There were a few other comments about hunting when this one guys asked the vegan girl if she eats fish, she replied that no, fish are animals and that she chose not to eat any animals or animal by products. But this is when something sort of odd happened. Some, if not all, of the anti hunting people said that they liked fish and liked to go fishing. Being the a-hole that I am, I decided to stir the pot, so to speak, and ask why they didn't like hunting, specifically deer. To which I got pretty much the same answer from everyone, it was inhumane. Ok, this is a joke right? I am not saying that it IS humane, but it got me to thinking. And I had to ask "so you some how feel that it is less humane to shoot an animal where the animal quite possibly dies instantly and never knew they had been shot nor felt pain as opposed to dragging an animal by it's face against it's will through water with a metal barbed hook shoved through it's face that you put there?" Man I really got to reevaluate "humane".