Fish vs Fishermen: A Love Story

Regarding the relationship

Fishing has always insisted on being described as many things - sustenance, sport, meditation, tradition - but rarely as what it most reliably is: an agreement between humans and fish that neither side ever acknowledged. One side arrives early, armed with optimism, equipment, and a story already half-written. The other side has been around for hundreds of millions of years and would very much prefer to be left alone. From this imbalance, a peculiar romance unfolds.

Humans tend to frame the encounter as pursuit. Strategy is discussed. Conditions are assessed. Lures are chosen with a seriousness usually reserved for decisions that matter. Fish, for their part, appear to treat the whole affair as background noise - an occasional interruption in a life devoted to eating, avoiding being eaten, and continuing to exist despite everything humans keep inventing. If there is a relationship here, it is one built almost entirely on misunderstanding.

What keeps the relationship alive is not success, which remains inconsistent at best, but hope. Hope that the elaborate ritual of knots, casts, and quiet waiting might eventually be rewarded with something more than damp sleeves and philosophical disappointment. Hope that today will be different, as though the fish have been reflecting on the previous encounters and are now open to compromise.

And still, people keep returning. Not because the fish care - clearly they do not - but because the arrangement offers something else: an agreed-upon misunderstanding played out in fresh air. Fish do not promise fulfillment. Fishing does not guarantee results. Still, both sides show up, again and again, locked in a surreal courtship defined less by conquest than by the simple fact that neither side ever quite leaves.

Arrival

The first move begins the same way every time: early, quietly, and with unjustified confidence. The fisher arrives convinced this particular stretch of water has been waiting. The silence is treated as meaningful, even though it was already there. There is a sense that something important is about to happen. Effort has been made after all. Gear has been assembled with ritual care. The cast is practiced once or twice, just in case anyone is watching, which they aren’t, but the performance feels necessary all the same.

The water offers no acknowledgment. It doesn’t react to presence, preparation, or mood. Below the surface, the fish do not notice the arrival. If they did, they would likely find it puzzling rather than threatening. Something splashes. Something shiny passes through their field of vision, behaving like an object that wants to be eaten a little too badly. They’ve seen this before. They haven’t evolved for this exact moment, but they have survived many similar ones, and their general strategy remains unchanged: continue being fish until proven otherwise.

Still, the line enters the water just like it always does. It’s the first overture in a conversation that will mostly consist of waiting. Above the surface, patience is framed as virtue. Below it, the day proceeds as planned. What follows is interpreted afterward as evidence of…something. This is how the arrangement begins each time: not with invitation, but with assumption.

The Fish

Fish are often described as primitive, which is a convenient way of dismissing something that’s outlasted every version of the world humanity has tried to build. They predate trees. They predate bones. Some individual fish alive today were born before entire political systems, languages, and moral panics came into existence. They were here long before hooks and boats. This longevity isn't the result of cleverness or sentiment, but of consistency. Fish do not aspire. They persist.

The Greenland shark can live to be 400 years old.

Their bodies reflect this philosophy. Some grow to the length of buses without ever developing interest in humans beyond mild confusion. Others remain small, translucent, or oddly shaped, as if assembled by committee and then left that way out of spite. There are fish that glow, fish that walk, fish that give birth through their mouths, fish that have not meaningfully changed since the world looked unrecognizable to us. Adaptation, in this context, has less to do with innovation and much more to do with not overreacting.

When fishing culture describes fish as clever adversaries - tricky, suspicious, or cunning - it reveals a certain anxiety. Fish are not matching wits with anglers. They’re not learning lessons. They’re responding to stimuli with a consistency that has carried them through ice ages, mass extinctions, and the sudden appearance of weekend hobbyists involving scented rubber imitations of food. If something looks wrong, they avoid it. If it looks right, they eat it. If nothing happens, they continue existing, which has proven to be a remarkably effective strategy.

From their perspective, fishing is not a contest but an occasional interruption in an otherwise uninterrupted day. Something flashes. Something moves incorrectly. Sometimes it’s edible. Sometimes it’s not. Most of the time, it’s ignored. This isn’t wisdom so much as indifference refined by repetition. Fish do not resent being pursued, nor do they feel satisfaction when they escape. They simply remain, unchanged in their priorities, waiting out yet another brief episode of human enthusiasm before returning to the long, unbroken business of being fish.

The Fisherfolk

If fish endure by consistency, fisherfolk endure by belief. They arrive carrying not just gear but explanations - about weather, timing, technique, and instinct - most of which are revised immediately after they fail. Fishing attracts people who are comfortable performing small rituals in exchange for large uncertainties. Hats become lucky. Spots acquire personalities. Silence is interpreted. None of this is accidental. Faced with an indifferent adversary, humans respond by narrating.

Unlike the fish, fisherfolk are never simply present. They are evaluating. Was the cast too far? Was the lure the wrong color, the wrong depth, the wrong idea entirely? Every minor variable becomes a possible cause, which is reassuring, because it implies control. Fishing is one of the few activities where effort can be intense, outcomes minimal, and the conclusion still framed as progress. Nothing happened, but at least something can be said to have been learned.

This is where stories begin. The tug that might have been a fish becomes a near certainty by the time it reaches shore. Absence is upgraded to suspense. Failure is softened into anticipation. Fishing stories do not require witnesses, because they are not meant to convince others so much as to preserve a sense of meaning for the teller. The phrase “you should’ve seen it” does a remarkable amount of work. It's one of the few phrases capable of improving events retroactively.

And yet, this persistence is not entirely foolish. In returning, again and again, fisherfolk are practicing a kind of negotiated humility. They prepare carefully for outcomes they cannot demand. They submit to waiting without guarantees. They accept that most days will offer nothing measurable in return. This does not make fishing noble, but it does make it revealing. Where fish persist without reflection, humans persist despite it. Fishing is one of the few occasions where failure is expected, rehearsed, and lovingly retold.

The Dance Floor: Techniques, Tricks, and Mutual Disrespect

This is where the relationship becomes physical. Lines move through water. Objects are offered. Lures flash, wobble, and vibrate. They’re designed to resemble food, but only in the way a pickup line resembles sincerity - close enough to invite curiosity, strange enough to raise suspicion. Sometimes they work. More often, they don’t.

Bait operates on a more honest dishonesty. Both sides understand the premise, which is where the trouble begins. The fish knows something is off. The fisher knows the fish knows. The fish knows the fisher knows the fish knows. At this point, everyone is fully informed, yet no one is changing course. The bait sits there, pretending to be dinner. The fish pretends to consider it. This shared pretense may be the closest thing to mutual respect the relationship ever achieves. The arrangement continues not because it’s convincing, but because acknowledging the absurdity would require stopping.

Over time, the tools have multiplied. What began as patience and observation has acquired accessories. Rods are tuned to specific species, moods, and personal insecurities. Reels whisper. Lines promise invisibility. Sonar renders the unseen visible, though not necessarily comprehensible. Apps record conditions. Data is logged. The fish remain unimpressed.

Ancient fishing required waiting, cooperation, and restraint. Nets were shared. Spears were simple. The goal was food, not documentation. Modern fishing often unfolds alone, surrounded by equipment engineered to minimize uncertainty while quietly amplifying expectation. But the fish haven’t changed. And the water’s still the same.  

On the dance floor, then, the imbalance persists. Fish respond to movement and mistake. Humans respond to feedback and hope. The choreography grows more elaborate with every generation, even as the steps remain fundamentally the same. One side survives by not overthinking. The other persists by doing almost nothing else.  

Moments of Grace (Rare, Fleeting, Over-Documented)

Occasionally, the relationship pauses. Not because anything has been resolved, but because nothing is happening. It’s here that anglers sometimes experience a quiet respect for the fish that didn’t bite. The realization that whatever is down there has made a choice, and that choice had nothing to do with you. This isn’t framed as rejection, but as dignity. The fish remains unseen, unnamed, and uninterested, which somehow feels preferable to “the one that got away”. Absence becomes a form of success.

Catch-and-release occupies a peculiar middle ground in this arrangement. It’s presented as ethics, maturity, stewardship - sometimes all at once. The fish is briefly held, documented, admired, and returned, having participated in the relationship just long enough to confirm its existence and generate proof. For the angler, this is also framed as success. For the fish, it’s an interruption followed by a continuation. A brief abduction by aliens that none of its schoolmates will ever believe. 

The best fishing stories often come from these moments of not catching anything. Sitting with the sensation of being briefly aligned with something older, indifferent, and unconcerned with your takeaway.

These are the stories that resist exaggeration, because exaggeration would miss the point. They end not with triumph, but with a shrug - an understanding that whatever grace was offered was temporary, unrepeatable, and probably improved by not being entirely explained.

Fish vs Fishermen: A Love Story

Everyone eventually announces they’re done. With fishing. With the standing around. With the rituals, the gear, and the mild self-deception. The declaration usually follows a bad season, an expensive purchase that failed to redeem itself, or a moment of clarity brought on by rain, wind, or being awake at an hour normally reserved for regret. I’m taking a break, they say, folding the rods with unnecessary ceremony.

From the fish’s perspective, this announcement goes entirely unnoticed.

Down below, nothing changes. No one marks the calendar. No one wonders where you went. The water holds its temperature, the current keeps its habits, and the fish - ancient, economical, and unimpressed - continue doing exactly what they were doing before you arrived with your hope and expectations. If anything, your absence is experienced as a slight improvement in the day.

The breakup never sticks because it was never mutual. Fishing doesn’t miss you and never agreed to the relationship in the first place. It doesn’t learn lessons or grow from time apart. It simply remains available, which is far more dangerous than need. Eventually, something brings you back - a memory softened by time, a photograph that flatters the moment, the quiet suspicion that maybe you misunderstood the whole thing.

When you return, the fish don’t greet you. They don’t recognize the growth you believe you’ve done. They behave as they always have: cautiously, indifferently, occasionally curious, mostly elsewhere. If there’s a relationship here, it’s asymmetrical and lightly hostile, sustained by your optimism and their complete lack of interest in it.

And yet - you keep coming. Not because a different outcome is necessarily expected, but because the arrangement still feels honest. You show up. You accept the terms. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes that’s the point. No breakthroughs. No tidy endings. Just water, patience, and the faint hope that this time, something might happen - or that nothing happening might once again feel like enough.

That’s why the breakup never sticks. Not because fishing needs you.

Because, occasionally, you need something that doesn’t.

Author’s Note: If this piece stirred a familiar restlessness, or the faint urge to stand near water without accomplishing much, we’ve collected a few things that live comfortably in that space. One is The One That Didn't Get Away by James Martinez.

A book less about fishing than about what lingers after it - memory, restraint, and the dignity of not forcing conclusions. Or if you’re looking for that perfect rod and reel combo, take a look at Sougayilang

Both are available through the links on our site, should you feel inclined. No urgency. Just a couple things that would pair nicely with the waiting.

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