Catch & Release

The last few weeks I've been once again fishing nearly every day, catching and mostly releasing a nice quantity of bass. I've kept a few. Yesterday I kept an eighteen-incher (for a neighbor) (having already released a couple of nineteen-inch or so fish. The other day, wading, deliberately having left my stringer in the car, a shellcracker took my #12 popper and fought so hard I though for sure I had a lunker bass. Having already released near a dozen nice bass during that wade, I decided to keep that dynamite shellcracker. Minus my stringer, I improvised a tether to my equipment belt via the long aluminum hook disgorger with monofilament lanyard my late tackle repairman and fishing buddy had given me. A good bass has a mouth you can reach your arm inside of; a good bluegill is much trickier going. But back at the beach both shellcracker and bluegill disgorger were gone. He worked himself loose from my belt. Good for him. But could he have shook free of the monofilament, alligator-chip, and 8" of aluminum? Sorry fish. Killing you to eat you is one thing; just killing you is murder.

Lots of fisherman, more and more, practice catch and release these days. It wasn't always so. Once upon a time if you could kill something, you killed it. Hungry? Drive a herd off the cliff. Cut yourself a nice filet, and the hell with the rest. Intelligence in mankind evolved so that women, once pregnancy became dangerous, could figure out where babies came from, and say No. (Thank you, Leonard Shlain.) Then males developed intelligence too: to figure out how to get laid. Our intelligence is related to seducing each other; not to any other form of survival. Everything else is a pose: a preposterous pose.
Ah, but we seem to be at a new crossroads: one in which we had damn well better develop other forms of intelligence. I don't give us good odds; I do grant that it's possible. So now we castigate those who just rip the hook out and throw the bloody fish back to list to one side and go brain dead: while we declare War on Terrorism, or any other kind of war we can dream up so we can continue to waste our unfair share of the world's energy.

Personally, I no longer care how many we kill: so long as I can spend another few years wading with my fly rod, with my bass rod, and feel something non-civilized at the other end of my line.

Now: my poor shellcracker. For one thing, if the bluegill-shaped sunfish can get themselves turned sideways, you think you've hooked Moby Dick. Or, my shellcracker was a virgin. A bass gets caught, he fights for his life. No one has made him go to school, to hold still for the doctor, to answer a draft notice, to halt when told to Halt. But once a bass has fought for his life, lost, and then found himself swimming around again, maybe with a sore mouth, but a sore than may heal eventually, maybe he won't fight quite so hard the next time he feels himself hooked.
The cow is herded here and here. One time she's prodded into a cattle car, then finds herself in another barn, another meadow ... Why should she imagine that one time she'll step up the ramp, and Wham! Right in the forehead.

So once upon a time you knew the size of the bass from the size of the fight: until he leapt, started his aerobatics. Then you could see him direct. If he was really really big, he was a she: only the females grow lunker-size. Now I'll sometimes get more fight from a twelve-incher than from a sixteen-incher. I've caught twenty-five inch bass that only gave me one good pull. Maybe she's old and tired. Maybe she's just spawned, and is weak. Or maybe she's been caught and released a dozen or two times. Maybe she's learned to be like the cow, expecting no worse than another new barn.

The cop rounds up the bloods, makes them stand against the wall. These guys have been rounded up before and before. Arrest one. He knows he'll be back on the street in hours: knows it like the cow knows it will just be another cattle car.
Ah, but not long ago no black would cooperate in holding still for any cop. Once upon a time no black was detained: and still retained the integrity of his body parts.
I say "black" 'cause it's familiar: even today. (For the longest time "cop" meant white cop.) But the same applied for Saxons detained by Normans, for Picts or Celts detained by Saxons ... for Tutsi detained by Hutu ... Would you obey orders if they came from 18,000 Muslims suddenly descended on Fairfield?

Once upon a time chances were better than even that you weren't about to be eaten alive among your fellow BigEnders. But what if you turned the path and there was a LittleEnder?

It's a funny film we're in. I wonder if we'll ever get to see much more than the Evening News worth of it.(PS What I said above reminds me of a trout I once brought near hand after less of a battle than I'd have liked. I was just slipping the net under his lip to guide him into sure captivity when he realized that the net wasn't something natural to the stream, that whatever little thing it was that was annoying him actually had him in mortal danger. That trout looked up. That trout saw me! That trout about-faced from the landing net, snapped my tippet like he had not yet begun to fight, and bolted for the darkest part of the deepest hole. That was the first time I ever realized that fish don't always realize that they're caught. They may not fight hard till they do.)