Time Essay: The Sport of Fishing: The Lure of Failure

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Fishing: a line with a worm on one end and a fool on the other. That definition seems as good as any. The bait may vary, but at the other end of the line, nothing is altered. At about this time each year, eager anglers pour down to lake shores and riverbanks in search of fresh-water fish. And each year, despite millions of dollars spent on equipment, despite the cleverest lures in history, the fisher folk are doomed to interminable hours of unsuccessful casts, tangled lines, spurned bait and impaled thumbs.

Theoretically, then, this somnolent sport should appeal to no one over the mental age of twelve. Instead, fishing continues to attract business leaders, politicians, intellectuals and writers to an extraordinary degree. What has hooked them?

In part, of course, it is the season. Fresh-water fishing automatically summons thoughts of lyrical spring days, when minutes, like dragonflies, hover motionless over water. Perhaps more important are the benefits derived from angling's lack of speed. Unlike any other outdoor sport, it allows the mind to unreel and stretch itself. With luck, and time, and endurance, the angler gets the long-awaited result. Out of dark water, the fish flashes to the surface like a new idea—and in that instant the sport justifies its glorious history.

From the very beginning, the appeal of the fin was irresistible. The very word angling derives from the ancient Greek onkos, or barbed hook. Circa 200 B.C., Cato the Elder (manifestly a non-angler) was astonished by tales of "a city where fish sold for more than an ox." (To the fisherman, the situation is unsurprising; acquiring the fish called for more ingenuity, greater effort and less tenderizer.) History's most prominent fisherman was, of course, St. Peter, who later turned to netting souls. In the years A.D., angling was seen as something more than the mere coaxing of coldblooded vertebrates from water. Consider, for example, Shakespeare's metaphor:

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth, and thus do we .. .by indirections find directions out.

With such distinguished observers and enthusiasts, it was only a question of time before the sport acquired its own philosopher. Izaak Walton, a draper by trade, was a biographer by avocation, but his chronicles have been forgotten. Only the discursive jottings on his favorite hobby have endured.

The Compleat Angler, published in 1653, remains as fresh today as it was in Oliver Cromwell's time. Through Walton, millions of readers have learned to put as much lead "as will sink the bait to the bottom and keep it still in motion, and not more," and that "when the wind is south, it blows your bait into a fish's mouth." Through Walton's American disciple, Washington Irving, millions more have been apprised of the fact that "there is certainly something in angling ... that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit, and a pure serenity of mind."