Why do we fish

Fishing for me can be problematic in that I'm an old school fisher(man). When I go fishing I want to fish.

I just arrived back from LBI short for 6.5 hrs to get there and 9 hrs to get back and a flurry of activity in between.

My partner and I went charter fishing for Blue fish on a beautiful evening fishing trip. Barneget Bay Light House on our starboard and a setting sun on our port. Sea Gulls overhead beckoning us out to sea. And 3 fisherman forward and aft whose baggage of alcohol outnumbered their fishing gear 10 to 1.

If you need to bring an extra large hefty trash bag to collect your consumables there might be a problem.

Fishing for me takes a certain amount of concentration that need not be interrupted by periods of the nectarean chumming the water with techno colour yawns. Drinking to the point of reducing billions of neurons to two that can't fire across a micron sized gap without getting lost. And if you can't find your bait because your sitting on it - stay home.

Other then that it was a great night of Blue fishing. Small snappers 1 - 5 lbs were the evenings fare, but fun never the less.

What brings me back to reality was the father that brought his two children 8 or 9 years old out to fish for the first time.

What seemed to me to be Moby Dick relived in the faces of these two children when they hooked into a 2lb fish, awe and delight at the methods and madness of fishing.

Unsteady feet, chins that barely reached the rail, casting and reeling as fast as they could with bait smeared fingers. Fishing at its best parent and child.

I recently went fishing with some friends and their 2 young daughters. As I watched their daughter 7 catch and release fish I realized that the battle cry of every fisher(m/w) should be:

"Take a child fishing"

If only to watch them speedily dial the phone and hear them exclaim to grandpa "I kissed a fish".

Tight-lines till next times.