In life you sometimes get a reminder, if you’re looking for it, of how good you’ve really got it.

A few days ago, I drug my son out to the beach to do some surf fishing. In all honesty, I think the only reason he went with me was because he’d been in trouble and was restricted from his lifeline – the Xbox. With nothing to do at the house, he probably figured watching Dad cuss on the beach was more entertaining than checking out the latest House episode.

We tossed some shrimp out, and even gave a topwater plug a useless twirl or two in the subdued surf of the early evening. Christian’s first hook up was a ladyfish – think of a tarpon, but instead of 50 lbs it’s 2. The fish jumped and ran like a sport fish is supposed to and, even though it was small, it lit up the afternoon. He immediately claimed superiority over me in fishing, loudly proclaiming me as THE Loser on The Beach, until I hooked a drum that probably would’ve gone 6 or 7 lbs. Then his competitiveness ebbed…

It turned out to be a mostly un-eventful outing. We caught a few more fish but really had nothing to come home and brag about. Rapidly running out of daylight, we left with sand all over us and a rumbling in the belly. I couldn’t tell then if he’d actually enjoyed himself, but I didn’t think it was all bad. Teenage boys are very difficult to read, and they oftentimes don’t even know how they feel themselves – they’re too busy trying to figure out how they’re supposed to feel.

Flash forward a few days. My son’s had a bad go of it at school, and my job hadn’t been much better. He came downstairs and plopped on the couch to catch an episode or two of Dirty Jobs with his old man. A couple hours pass, and we laughed at Mike Rowe fighting bed bugs in mattresses and cleaning out God-knows-what from the latest sewer pipe he’d decided to crawl in to. When the eyes started to get heavy and the hour grew late, he popped up off the couch to head to bed.

Just before making the right turn to head upstairs, he spun around and asked, “Hey Dad – you wanna go fishing Saturday morning?”

Now, I don’t care where you’re from our how you were raised, what your background is, how you get your jollies, nor where you fall in the political spectrum. But there is nothing in the world that feels better than having your kid WANT to spend time with you.

In this cynical world, with all the bickering and fighting, with all our problems and all we have to worry about, my son wants me to take him fishing.

Kids sometimes get a bad rap in our society. We see them through the jaded eyes the media paints them with, and too often come to expect them to be the apathetic, angry jerks we just KNOW they are. But every once in a while, every so often, a kid turns aside from the movies, video games and cell-phone texting and chooses to simply spend a morning with Dad. You can rest assured that unless God blows the whistle and we’re all asked to get out of the pool beforehand, Christian and I will be hitting the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, surf fishing in Satellite Beach, FL, during the early morning hours this Saturday.

And I’ll be smiling.

Matt

Some weekends start with a dull groan. Some start with a bang. And some start with 500,000 lbs of liquid oxygen and hydrogen igniting in a fantastic, internal-organ-shaking, controlled explosion.

Bet my Friday night was a bit more ‘moving’ than yours was, huh?

At 11:57:38, my family and I watched the space shuttle take off from Kennedy Space Center. We were about as close as you can get without dodging smoke clouds, debris and terrified animals – so close that, once it cleared the pad, we felt the launch as much as heard/saw it. An incredible experience I’ll always cherish, as I got to share it with my youngest two kidlets – my son yelling “YEAH! GO!GO!GO!” was the highlight for me. After the excitement wore off and I was driving home, serenaded by the sounds of EVERYONE in the van snoring, I realized the entire evening only had one small drawback for me – I knew I had to get up at 0430 the next morning. See, I finally got invited to go fishing…

As most of you know, we moved to Satellite Beach, Florida, about a month or so ago. Since that time I’ve battled mortgage agents and banking figures for the privilege of giving them money every month for the next 15-30 years, and engaged in a ferocious war against boxes stacked throughout my house. Thankfully we defeated the mediocrity and ambivalence of the banking and mortgage community (why on Earth they fight so hard to restrict my ability to give them all my money I’ll never know), and have the cardboard menace on the run now – we’ve conquered and laid claim to all lands but the garage. I plan on storming the last stronghold of the hated enemy when things cool down.

Just before we actually moved in, the master builder for the community came by to do our walk through. Bill Segall, a 58 year old guy with a mountain of experience in the construction arts, has one of those faces you know is about to break into a grin at any moment. Engaging and entertaining, with little eyes smiling out from behind small, wire rimmed glasses, I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t instantly like him. At one point in the walk through, Bill made a comment about fish possibly lurking in the pond right behind my house (a pond I cannot get to/fish in, by the way), and we struck up a conversation about fishing.

Bill’s been freshwater fishing Florida’s canals and backwaters for decades and told me the one thing I was dying to hear; “I love going fishing but can’t seem to find anybody that wants to go with me.” I think Angie’s ‘Oh my God, here we go’ exasperation rumbled the walls.. (more…)

and a smorgasbord of other stuff!

I taunt Insane with my first bass of the day! Yes, my friends, that is a tequila sunrise Culprit worm.

Yes, fishing in a muddy creek. That’s all the fishing I’ve gotten to do in the last couple weeks. Insane and I hit the little creek he features in his Lunchtime Angler series last Friday. I had stubbornly persisted in trying to fly fish this thing, but finally gave up. Bow and Arrow casting isn’t my specialty, and certainly not with gar flies and big bass poppers. That’s about all one has room for. The banks are heavily forested and steep. The creek is only about 15′ wide, and it’s full of downed brush. I pulled out the dusty spinning rod, found my stash of plastic worms, lizards and sinkers and rigged it up. It all came back to me surprisingly well. Fly fishing is my true love, but snaking a plastic worm through brush is still fun. And, on a hot day with a muddy creek in front of me, it felt, somehow, right.

I managed to catch four small bass and the hawg of the trip, a 7 lb bowfin. It was a handful on the light spinning rod. Sorry, no photos. The typical technique for actually getting your hands on a fish out of this creek is to “cane pole” the little beasts up to yourself. Not an option with a 7 lb bowfin. Insane manned the camera while I tried to ease the fish up the bank by pulling the line hand over hand. I somehow managed to wrap my right index finger in the line, nearly pinching it in two, and while trying to save that valuable appendage (read “while screaming and cursing at Insane to help”), the line finally broke. Too bad. I really wanted a photo of that fish, but I wanted the tip of my index finger even more.

Insane fishes the muddy creek in a photo I heavily altered just for the heck of it.

In other news, I heard from Andy Whitcomb last week. He got another article published on ESPN Outdoors. This time he talks about bait. So, I might have been reduced to plastic worm fishing, but at least I haven’t descended to the depths Andy has. Seriously though, Andy’s a good writer. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this particular article is, well, “cute.” Check out this one and his future articles on ESPN Outdoors.

I also recently heard from Matthew Crampton, our friend from Scotland who just loves taunting us with photos of huge brown trout. I found sadistic pleasure in Matthew’s latest note as it turns out he had a tough trip on his favorite island of South Uist. Just kidding, Matthew. If I can’t catch fish, I at least hope my friends can. Make sure to check out the book Matthew and his friends put together about their favorite fishing lodge on South Uist. I’m still reading the book, and it’s been great. (Note: I’ve been reading the book now for about two months, but as always my problem is that I have four or five books going at once and never seem to finish them…) You can pick up a copy of the book at www.muddlerbooks.com. Matthew sent the excellent photo below of the dog Bee who is apparently an excellent fishing companion – so long as you don’t miss any takes.

The fishing dog Bee on a recent South Uist fishing adventure.

David Knapp over at The Trout Zone has been posting articles about his adventures out West this summer. David’s blog is where you need to look if you want to read a fly fishing blog where people actually catch fish and, well, fly fish as opposed to dredging muddy creeks with plastic worms and whining about not getting to fish.

I finally got in my new tying desk! I’m trying to get the catastrophe that is my tying materials organized. As soon as that’s accomplished, I’ll post a photo. It’ll be the last time ever the desk will look that good.

I’m WAY behind the times here, but I finally saw the first Trout Bum Diaries DVD. Perhaps surprisingly, I actually enjoyed it. The narration was pretty cheesy, but a lot of the remainder was enjoyable. The filming was well done. If I was doing a similar movie, I’d do it a little differently, maybe with a little more structure, maybe toss in a few of the witty observances I’m famous for, etc. If you’d like to fund me in this effort, please email me right away. The DVD wasn’t bad at all. It made me really want to go to Patagonia.

I suppose that’s all I can ramble about. I apologize for neglecting the site so glaringly over the last month or so. Hopefully that’s about to change. Later in the week look for, finally, another TVangler classifieds item. Take care,

Nathan

One hears a lot of talk about the local fly or bait and tackle shop versus the big megastores like Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. I generally try to support the local shops whenever I can, but I don’t avoid the big stores altogether. When we were in Destin, FL recently, I experienced something that speaks to the situation.

We had planned to do a little fishing, but I only decided at the last minute to buy a fly rod (I had debated on the drive and finally rationalized the purchase by telling myself I could use the rod on next year’s planned trip to the Keys). I hoped to buy the rod in a local shop, but I wasn’t aware of what was available in Destin, and I didn’t have my own vehicle. Still, we found a local tackle shop near our condo unit. Unfortunately it turned out to be rather short on fly gear, but they had a large selection of conventional tackle. I decided to support them anyway by purchasing a Tilley Hat and a pair of wading shorts. The other guys might have purchased a good bit of tackle (they were all using conventional gear) if not for one thing: the shop owner was blatantly rude to my brother when he asked for some advice on a good spot or two for fishing from shore. He didn’t make a nuisance of himself, just asked for a simple suggestion and what we could possibly expect to catch. I had already bought my stuff or I might have put it back. It was uncalled-for and really pretty puzzling. I don’t understand the concept of insulting your customers. I could have perhaps understood if we were asking a lot of questions and not buying anything. (more…)

The first time I saw the Flint River I had a 60 year old real estate agent and an overanxious, but young and pretty, sales lady hovering over my every step. I’d like to say that sealed the deal on the house – the Flint, not the attractive sales lady – as I immediately envisioned fishing in my own river, but the yammering about the neighborhood, interest rates, and why NOW was such a GOOD TIME TO BUY affected my imagination and fantasy neurons.

Besides, I had to pee.

Now, four years later and on the verge of moving yet again, I look back and realize how blessed I was…

In May of 2005, I was toiling away for Citrix in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl., when I got a call from an old friend. He offered me a position working for NASA (through a contract) on Redstone Arsenal, so long as I was willing to ‘get up here’ within 2 weeks. I pondered the situation. On one hand, this was sunny South Florida, and that was, uh, Huntsville, Alabama. On the other, I and my family had a much greater chance of making it in to and out of any given store in Huntsville without getting stabbed than in Ft Lauderdale. Decision made, we made the call, pulled the trigger, and settled in New Market, with the slow but steady Flint gurgling a few hundred yards away from our front door.

At the time things were very surreal. So much so that – believe it or not – it took me a couple months to actually make it to the Flint for a fishing trip. Initially I wasn’t even sure it even held fish. The river was so slow and low – little more than a creek – I wasn’t sure anything worth catching would be in there. Then, one day, my neighbor across the street was sticking a rod into the back of his truck. I yelled over to find out where he was headed and, 10 minutes later, two relationships were born: my eternal lust for catching fish out of the Flint and a sincere friendship. Zack has been a great friend, neighbor, and fishing buddy for 4 years now, and continues to be – in my opinion – the most entertaining fishermen to go out with ever. *

That first fishing trip was nearly disaster. I had old line on a spinning reel that kept twisting itself into bird nests, and was totally unprepared for wading a river – something I’d never tried before in my hometown of Theodore, Al. My only saving grace was Zack was just as unprepared (and unskilled) as me, and carried along with him two very cold adult beverages.

I told you he was a good man.

We wound up catching, that day, everything but a smallmouth. Two largemouth, a few bream, some crappie and a freshwater drum Zack went ballistic over. I think, to this day, his “What the ___ is THAT??!?” continues to echo somewhere on the river. I still had no idea smallmouth were even in the river, but was pleased to know there were some fish worth going after.

Not long afterward I purchased a couple of tandem kayaks, and the wife and I decided to take their maiden voyage down the Flint together. The idea was to scout everything out, making sure it was ok for the kids. On that trip I, of course, took along one lone ultralight spinning outfit, ‘just to try’ while we were paddling. Among the many fish I caught that day was my first smallmouth. Ever. He would’ve gone 3 lbs on anyone’s scale, although to my adrenalin filled arms and endorphin soaked brain he felt and looked like a State record.

Pardoning a pun, I was hooked.

I’ve spent the better part of the past 4 years trying to pull smallmouth out of the river. Sure I’ve done battle with the other species, but I just can’t match the addictive rush I get from smallmouth blasting a topwater. Cocaine? Heroin? Supermodels? Forget it – THIS is the drug for me…

OK, I’d take a super model too, but you get the picture. (more…)

Fish Fry, Beginning of Naturalist Series, and ESPN Finally Recognizes TVangler’s Contribution to the World of Fishing

Behold Hawgdaddy, Conqueror and Consumer of Bluegills!

Last weekend we got the old gang together for some bluegill fishing and a fish fry. The fish fry was perhaps a tad optimistic since the catching of fish was mandatory for having fish to fry, and given our history with Lady Luck, well, you know. Fortunately, the ol’ gal came through with enough bluegills, shellcrackers and one big crappie to ensure we were all well-fed. I borrowed my father’s bass boat and Insane brought his flat bottomed jon boat which, by the way, had neither functioning trolling motor nor paddles. Drake and one of his buddies had another, better equipped flat bottom. We launched our attack on the sunfish populations at North Sauty on Lake Guntersville.

Insane and I had located a potential bluegill bed the day before, and we began there, Insane tying off to our boat since he also didn’t have an anchor. We caught a few keepers there, but the bite slowed to almost nothing after an hour or so, and it never was exactly fast and furious. So we moved to a rocky bank, which required that I tow Insane and his sorry excuse for a professional bass boat. I’ve never tried to steer a train on a sheet of ice, but I imagine it’d be similar to trolling down that bank with Insane in tow. The slightest breeze from behind tried to wrap Insane’s boat completely around ours. Still, we managed. Jacqulyn’s sister Gina caught the big fish of the day, a fat crappie that went around 1.5 lbs. I managed to do pretty well with my South Bend #47 bamboo and an olive/tan panfish polecat, but Insane and his brother Justin did a little better on their live bait, as much as it pains me to admit. Jacqulyn shared a spinning rod with Gina and netted a couple bluegills. We ended up with around 20 fish big enough to keep for frying, and Drake and his friend Jason added another 9. The whole thing was reminiscent of those big family get-togethers we used to have all the time when I was younger. The only thing missing was the old hand-crank ice cream maker. It was a great time, and a big thanks to Drake and his wife Trish for the use of their home. My lovely wife and uber-fishergirl Jacqulyn provided the photo documentation of the trip.

Gina's monster crappie, the biggest fish of the day.

Towing the Ricketts Brothers around the lake. Do you believe they actually gave me some lip about not positioning them well enough for optimal casting?

ESPN Outdoors

I was recently contacted by Andy Whitcomb, a gentleman who occasionally writes for ESPN Outdoors. He was curious about my thoughts on how we talk about fish size. We bounced some ideas off each other by email. Andy was working on an article on the subject. He emailed me yesterday to let me know it had been published and gave me a link. I was thrilled to see the article on the ESPN Outdoors front page. Finally, after all these years, I’ve gotten the high profile media attention I and my mother were convinced I always deserved. All joking aside, Andy’s article is very well written and covers an interesting topic. I especially like the part about bass fishermen tossing lures the size of 6″ brook trout, strategically placed after my comments. The Oprah reference was also a nice touch. Thanks for the shout out, Andy.

Naturalist Fridays (more…)

My best friend, growing up on Oaklane Drive in tiny Theodore, Alabama, was a guy named Joe. Among the other assorted exploits young men get into (shooting anything that moved with a 22, riding bikes everywhere, blowing up fireworks, etc.) Joe, my brother, and I used to regularly ‘camp out’ in his backyard. By camp out, I mean we’d stay up all night and run around the neighborhood, wreaking havoc and, occasionally, trying to work our way into the hearts of the young ladies living on our street.

Yes, I said hearts – not what you were thinking, you sick twisted freaks.

Anywho, on one notable evening Joe had decided we needed to ingratiate ourselves to the fairer sex, who happened to be having their own sleepover type fest at a house just down the street. I’d go into the various attempts he made that evening to get their attention and, eventually, get to their window, but suffice it to say while it initially seemed to be lost on our targets, it did seem to get everyone else in the neighborhood’s attention.

Lisa’s dad sure noticed.

Undeterred, we kept at it until, finally, in the wee hours of the morning, we were summoned to the window by quiet whispers and gestures. All that running, all the hiding, all the praying the shotgun really wasn’t loaded finally paid off.

Which brings me to my point – never give up. On women or fish. (more…)

Am I the only one that associates fishing and music? I don’t think so. I see lots of fishing blogs out there that mention music on a regular basis. I’ve always closely associated the two, perhaps because fishing trips typically involve lots of time in the car and music is a good space filler.

I hold that there are two types of fishing music. The first is the lucky fishing song. This is the song that possesses some mystical power over the fish causing them to bite with irrational fervor any time you, the fisherman, happen to hear it on the way to the fishing. You don’t even have to like the song, but for whatever reason the fish bite like crazy if you hear it. These are pretty rare if my experience is any indication. I’ve only had two, and both were a part of my former life as a hardcore bass fisherman. Luckily for me, I happen to like them both. One was “Neon Moon” by Brooks & Dunn. During the summers of my youth, it was my custom to fish Thursday evening bass tournaments with my father at the Jackson County Park boat ramp. We went on a tear in which we won five or six in a row. Many of the best bass fishermen on Lake Guntersville competed in those little tournaments back then, so it was quite an accomplishment. We realized that “Neon Moon” just happened to be playing before each one. We started paying attention and whenever we heard that song, we caught lots of bass, and they were big ones, too. We usually won Big Fish and First Prize overall. The other lucky song was “Bubba Hyde” by Diamond Rio. This one only worked for my best friend Jeremy, my brother, and I. We got in a pattern one summer where we heard this song fairly often when pulling our trusty 14′ aluminum v-bottom boat (lovingly christened the “Hawgdaddy” in black spray paint along the sides – Hawgdaddy subsequently becoming my nickname). Whenever we heard that song, we absolutely wore the fish out. I knew from previous experience with “Neon Moon” that this was magic, so we picked up on it more quickly. It was the closest thing to a sure bet I’ve ever known. We got smart and tried to play these songs by CD when pulling the boat, but it’d only work if we heard it purely by chance on the radio. I tried to turn Robert Earl Keen’s “Five Pound Bass” into a lucky fishing song just because it seemed like it should be, but it never worked. My skeptical side says that we caught all those fish because we fished all the time and knew what we were doing; not because of any song. But then there’s that part of me that wonders…

The second type of fishing music is the music that I just plain like. I don’t know that the music holds any power over the fish, or maybe the trout I’ve been devoted to over the last few years are just less musically-inclined than largemouth bass. Either way, I simply love listening to this stuff while on a fishing trip. My long-time favorites (defined as being favorites for longer than a couple years) are Alabama (obviously, huh?), the Eagles, Chris LeDoux, George Strait, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash, Robert Earl Keen, and Norah Jones. New favorites are Levon Helm, the Wailin’ Jennys, and the Be Good Tanyas. What are your favorites? Though, knowing how fishermen are, don’t feel obligated to give away your lucky fishing songs. Stick to this second category of stuff.

I’ve got a John Gierach book on CD that I also like to listen to on fishing trips: At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman. I’ve probably heard it a half dozen times, and I came to associate the narrator’s voice with Gierach so much that I was puzzled the first time I heard the man himself speak in a video. I had trouble reconciling the various bits of the known universe for awhile, but I eventually recovered.

Take care,
Nathan

As a fisherman, you probably hear a lot about how some run of salmon isn’t meeting commercial fishing standards, how some particular subspecies of cutthroat trout out West faces extinction, how all the oceans are being depleted, etc. I suspect that for the average Alabama fisherman all this feels pretty distant. Our streams and rivers are full of the same fish they’ve always had, aren’t they? The talk on fly fishing sites about endangered fish got me curious about our area. I wondered how many of our fish are in trouble. I was vaguely aware of a few cases that have made the evening news, but in truth I was pitifully ignorant on the topic.

The Alabama sturgeon. Photo courtesy of US Fish & Wildlife Service.

So I did a little online research. As it turns out, we have quite a few fish facing serious obstacles to their continued existence, some to such an extent that we probably can’t halt their extinction even were we to try. Some of them I’m familiar with, some not so much. Our fish might not get the publicity of the salmons and the trouts, but that tends to endear them more closely to my heart. They’re like the poor little orphans of the threatened fish world. Some of the larger fish, like the sturgeons and spoonbills, have always fascinated me. As a child I heard whispered rumors, tantalizingly short on details, uttered by my father and his fishing buddies under the street lamp at the Mud Creek boat dock. There were big fish hooked deep in the river that couldn’t be moved with bass tackle, something large bumping a flatbottom jon boat during a night fishing trip, stories passed down from old-timers. Could they have been big sturgeon? Was that big fish you glimpsed rolling on the edge of the river a spoonbill? Maybe even a sturgeon?

My goal here is simply to make you aware of some of these cases. You may or may not care, but I think you should. Each one of these fish is a part of us, a part of what makes our state unique. It’s not just fish, either. There are some pretty cool plants and other animals that are in trouble. We lose a little bit of ourselves whenever one of these vanishes forever. The way I see it, God put them here for a reason, and even if that reason is for His own good pleasure, that’s plenty good enough for me to want to save them. Even if you don’t buy the God argument, I’m sure you’d agree that even the tiniest part of an ecosystem can have profound impacts on the whole, and, therefore, that all parts are deserving of our care and good stewardship. I figure the biggest reason many folks don’t care is because they’re simply unaware. If you have knowledge of something, it seems you’d be more likely to care about its continued existence. Like I’ve said many times on this site, there are rarely easy solutions to problems like these, but half-way to a solution is knowing there’s a problem. So with that goal in mind, let me quickly acquaint you with a few of Alabama’s threatened and endangered fishes. Links are included in the footnotes for further study. (more…)

You hear lots about so-called “stimulus packages” these days. As a fisherman, I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. We’ve been using stimulus packages for years. So, too, has the government. It’s just that there are varying degrees of stimulus, and lately the degree seems to be pretty high.

In fishing, we have differing levels of stimulus packages just like the government. Take the chum line. That’s our version of the huge, trillion dollar, better-start-printing-new-money stimulus package. Or the San Juan Shuffle. That one’s just about as bad as the chum line, at least a multi-billion dollar deal. It may be even worse, because it’s actually chumming while trying to look like you aren’t, an act, amusingly enough, with many parallels in the world of politics and economics. The practice known as “stoning the pool” is a much lesser form of stimulus package, sort of like a tax cut for the rich. The degrees in regards to fishing are, of course, entirely subjective, there being nothing so mundane as dollars and cents by which to measure them.

Fishing stimulus packages even make appearances in the finest of our literature. Norman Maclean describes his brother Paul “shadow casting.” This was an attempt to repeatedly flash a fly over trout to convince them that a bug hatch was on, thereby stimulating them into rising. On the scale of stimulus packages, this one is way down near the bottom. So near, in fact, as to be pretty cool (once again, a subjective reckoning on my part). If you want a parallel in economics, it would be like subtly hinting to the press that gas prices are about to go up, thereby piquing interest in filling up before you get home from work. When I refer to the “bottom,” what I mean is that gray area in which it becomes difficult to discern a stimulus package from just fishing (or an artificial economic stimulus from just the normal functioning of an economy).

I thought about adding the idea of eliciting a “reaction strike” with some outrageously assembled lure to the list of fishing stimulus packages, but then I thought it probably didn’t fit. A reaction strike is an entirely natural thing. A frog jumps in the water near a big bass, and WHAM! The fish strikes with little inclination to inspect how nearly the frog really looks like a frog. So to try and recreate that type of reaction with a lure or fly is closer to “matching the hatch” than you might initially think. And that got me to thinking that I should really nail down some sort of definition if I was planning to continue with this ridiculous conversation…

………………………..

So what exactly constitutes a fishing stimulus package? To be able to say what qualifies, you need a good working definition. You could make the case that all fishing with artificial lures involves the presenting of a stimulus package, but we won’t go there (and I’m making this up as I go, so this is how I choose to do it). A stimulus package, generally speaking, is an action or actions meant to artificially stimulate or excite, with the ultimate goal of modifying the environment so that a desired end is more probable. In economics, a stimulus package hopes to excite the overall economic environment so that a gravitation back toward a healthy state is more likely. That healthy state is analogous to your convincing of a fish to strike. So, in fishing, a stimulus package is an action or actions undertaken to get the fish in the mood to strike your offering before you actually present it with that offering. By our definition, the act of fishing with the artificial lure can’t be considered a stimulus package in itself because it’s simply a requirement of the system, much like having an economy is a requirement of having a healthy economy. The natural state is you fishing with an artificial lure. The state after the implementation of your stimulus package is you fishing an artificial lure in a chum line. You’ve changed the environment so that convincing a fish to strike is much more likely than in its natural state.

As we’ve seen, fishing and economic stimulus packages are fairly similar. The basic principle is the same by definition, but one similarity that really sticks out to me is an emotional one. I can’t shake the feeling that stimulus packages are a form of cheating. No offense meant to saltwater anglers who use chum lines (or the poor AIG executives who pocketed a big chunk of our stimulus money in bonuses). I suppose you really don’t stand much chance of even locating your game in something as big as the ocean without using a chum line. Still, it would be nice if it wasn’t needed. Heck, I’m sure you saltwater fishers would agree. Don’t think there are too many folks out there who love shoveling chum (but the thought does raise some interesting possibilities in regards to those AIG execs). Some of the other stimulus packages seem enough like cheating that most everyone agrees (i.e. San Juan shuffle).

In the end, however, the comparison fails on one major point. It’s the one big, looming difference that makes shoveling chum infinitely more practical and attractive than the latest round of economic stimulus. Fishing stimulus packages actually work.

Take care,
Nathan