Bait and switch
In some cardboard box of brown photographs there's a 50-year-old picture of me on the bank of a pond, squinting and holding up a sunfish, the first fish I ever caught. I look happy. The fish's opinion of the business is unclear, but if it had been asked, no doubt it would have preferred to remain in the pond.
A few weeks ago, my brother proposed an early-morning, end-of-season trout expedition on a Plymouth lake. I was almost embarrassed to have to decline; it was November, and I had never gotten around to buying a fresh-water license. The putative reason was that I'd been so busy, which was true. But another reason must be faced. More and more, I'm having a hard time with a pastime that I've enjoyed all my life. I've been feeling sorry for the fish.
Now, don't laugh. Of course it's not a consistent position. I enjoy eating almost every kind of meat and fish. There is a system in life that began with our common ancestors; we are made of flesh, and it's natural for us to make use of it, as long as we're not cruel or disrespectful. So why does it now make me uneasy to hook the trout, striper, or bluefish and haul it in?
It's an old uneasiness. One summer, when I was about 10, a huge school of pollack appeared in my seaside town, where I fished almost every day at the town pier. I was overjoyed as I hauled in dozens of fish and dropped them on the pier to flop around and die, then carried them home in a grocery bag. But I knew that nobody ate pollack; it was considered a trash fish, so I ended up dumping the shiny brownish bodies with dull eyes in the woods behind my house. Someone, probably my father, let me know that this was a shameful waste.
I've continued in adulthood to fish both fresh and salt water, and can't deny that the strike and the battle are a thrill, yet I'm troubled by them, too. The finny tribe is among the most graceful, and when the trout or landlocked salmon comes to hand, I often say, "What a beautiful thing," knowing that the price of that pleasurable frisson is terror and pain for the victim.
You will hear fishermen say that a fish doesn't feel anything but pressure when hooked, since the jaw is mostly gristle, but I don't buy it. A hooked fish tries desperately to get away, and the more fiercely it fights, the more it is esteemed. In his 1999 book "A Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman," art critic Robert Hughes imagines a man on a pier biting a hot dog. Suddenly, "your gullet is convulsed with a choking pain and a sharp pull snaps your head forward and down. . . . The unidentifiable force drags you" to the bottom, where "something enormous and unknown grabs you and, if you are lucky, kills you with a blow to the head." If not, "you cannot hear or understand the Thing on the seabed chatting with its fellow Things about how well you fought."
In recent years, conscientious fly fishermen like myself have sought to conserve fresh-water fisheries by practicing catch-and-release. We use barbless hooks that slip out easily, and a landing net that protects the fins, and try gently to release the fish underwater without damaging the gills. This practice makes us feel considerate of the admired creature whom we catch but do not kill. But how is it more civilized? I see the men lined up along Columbia Point in Dorchester with their clams, long rods, and buckets. The haughty anglers in Vermont with their Sage rods and Orvis waders disdain those guys as "meat fishermen." But at least they are catching food for the table. If you don't eat the fish, isn't catch-and-release just torturing a small animal for fun, like a cat with a mouse?
So I'll give up fishing, you ask? Probably not. In September I spent a day fishing off Gloucester with my friend David Cohen. The sea sparkled on that sunny, summery day as we passed Annisquam Light, and flocks of Bonaparte's gulls swooped all around. We found schools of blues tearing into baitfish (unconcerned for the shiners' terror), landed a few that had fought furiously, and released them.
Suddenly David pointed to a strange fin pointing skyward and approaching languidly. "An ocean sunfish," he said. We stared with fascination at what appeared to be a 6-foot upright dinner plate with fins, whose Latin name is Mola mola. It took no notice of us as it passed the boat, leaving us with the awesome sense of nature going its way, with its own morals and methods. At such moments, you can't help but feel part of it, and not part of it, at the same time. This sunfish we would not have molested for the world. 