Tried And True

Did you know that if you bait a hook, cast it into a pond or lake stocked with fish, and quietly wait a while in the early morning, you can often catch a fish?

That's absurd. Our boss ordered us to go fishing once, because he read about it in a magazine. We didn't catch any fish at all. As soon as we got rid of that boss, we went back to the old TriedAndTrue way - dynamiting the pond, then skimming off all the floating dead fish.

How did your boss tell you to fish?

Our boss stomped up and down the shoreline yelling at us to "Catch a fish!"

Well, most references on fishing mention you have to be quiet. Otherwise you'll spook the fish ...

What a bunch of baloney! Our dynamite technique makes plenty of noise, and it has never failed us before.

Okay, let's start over again. One must go very early in the morning, because that's when fish come up to the surface to feed...

Do you seriously expect us to get up early each morning, after a hard evening's work dynamiting fish, just to follow the fish's schedules??

Then you put a worm onto the hook at the end of your line...

Our boss told us to put the worm into the little hole in the end of the fishing rod, then hold the line with the other hand. And we cut off the hooks and put them into the tackle box because they looked dangerous.

Well, you weren't fishing, then. So don't blame a magazine article about advanced fishing if you weren't following the basic procedures and practices.

Oh, right. Now we see how the zealotry works! If our fishing failed, you just go and claim that we weren't fishing! So if we had succeeded, you would say fishing was the best thing since sliced tuna!

If you caught fish via some other means than fishing, bully for you. There are plenty of ways to catch fish. We have found that one very good way, for personal sustenance, and a local minimum of time cost and effort, is fishing. Folks have been making fishhooks for this purpose for scores of thousands of years.

See? The magazine article said fishing was this great new thing, and there you admit folks have been doing it since the Pleistocene! Well, which is it? blah blah blah...

If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, he'll buy a funny hat.

If you talk about fish to a starving man, you are a consultant.

-- DogBert