The truth about fishing is this: no matter how much a fisher dude raves about the spiritual rejuvenation of being one with nature, in your typical 8-hour day of fishing on the lake that fisher dude doesn’t actually see that much of nature.

Rather than this,

Unidentified fat white cloud does the Macarena over Oak Lake, Ontario, Canada

he sees mostly this:

My Eyes Glaze Over

Which is okay as long as you look up every few minutes to savor the beauty. But if you do, then Mr. Walleye, who is hungry but not stupid, is going to snork your minnow.

When one reels in his line and finds an empty jig he gets the dreaded, your-minnow-done-been-snorked taunt from his colleagues.

Somebody always blurts “Ho! Fishing on credit!” (HOFOC). No distracting wonders of nature for them, just hour after hour of staring intently at the four-foot square of water in front of them.

On the positive side, those “Where’s Walleye?” moments are an opportunity for long-postponed soul-searching on the who-am-I/where-am-I-going spectrum. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much knocking about in the clutter of a contused soul before eyes begin to glaze over like a Sunday donut.

Experts refer to this as Pre-Snoring/Head Nodding/Eyeball Rolling Syndrome (PSHNERS), known in the literature as Pishner’s Spalpeen. Outside the literature most of us just refer to it as Nap Attack (NA) which, incidentally, is one of the leading causes of HOFOC.

In any case, the action of the sun on rippling water has a hypnotic effect and can produce bizarre dreamy thoughts. For instance, while staring at the water I wondered: if someone says ‘Have a great day!’ and I do have a great day, am I obligated to go back to that someone and say thanks?

And if winning the lottery was what made my great day a great day, do I need to tip them? Is fifty bucks enough?

Fortunately I didn’t win the lottery. But in another hypnotic moment  I saw myself in the TSA line at the airport. A sign warned: “We take all jokes very seriously.” I said “Gorilla walks into a bar…”

Three TSA types took me aside and grilled me for hours about which bar, how many gorillas, what is their religion, who is their favorite dobro player, do they have a face book page, do they believe in global warming, do they have barbecues on Sunday and invite non-gorilla friends over, when they do the hokey pokey, which foot do they put in first: left or right?

As I snapped out of that, the guy beside me, a novice, asked “Do fish have any other activities during the day besides just swimming and eating?”

The third guy in the boat jerked his head up in mid-nap attack. “You mean like bowling?” He shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

And he was right. If God wanted fish to bowl He would have given them fingers to hold the ball. Instead He gave us the fingers so we could bowl and fish.

Which doesn’t seem fair, but it all works out. Because fish don’t have to deal with the TSA and can keep all of their lottery winnings.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013, all rights reserved.