(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . For the Love of Fish(ing) [1] ['Claire Carlson', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2025-07-30 Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week. One of my favorite things to do outdoors as a kid was go fishing. My dad and I would load up his Toyota 4Runner with poles, tackle gear, and a little cup of live worms and drive to the trout-stocked pond just outside of town. There, we’d spend the afternoon waiting for my kid-friendly, red-and-white bobber to flash red, signifying a fish at the end of my hook. When I got a little older I graduated to a regular spinner, which we’d use to fish the banks of the nearby creek where native brook trout swam. These proved to be the most delicious fish: they were small enough to eat whole – bones and all – which we’d do by breading and frying them in oil for several minutes on each side. We’d leave their fins and tails on, thin as chips and just as tasty. Never in my years of fishing did I directly kill the fish I caught. I left that work to my dad, who had a clean way of sticking his finger down their throats and breaking their necks (this only works for fish roughly 12 inches or smaller – anything larger and you have to use a mallet, brain spike, or some other weapon of minor destruction). I would turn my head away in horror, not wanting to witness the death I’d wrought. Once, though, I did have to witness it. This was on a backpacking trip with my dad and some family friends, two of whom were around my age and similarly horrified by death. But this didn’t stop us from fishing. One evening a few days into the trip, the three of us went fishing while our parents cooked mac and cheese. We didn’t think about what might happen if we actually caught a fish, we just wanted to cast into the crystal clear waters of the alpine lake we’d hiked to. But, as sometimes happens when you are fishing, we ended up catching a fish. It was a long, fat trout who’d clearly made a good life for itself in that seldom-fished lake. The bravest of us (not me) grabbed the fish while it was still on the hook and gripped it tightly in her hands while we screamed for the adults to come help us. The fish, unhappy with its new circumstances, wiggled helplessly, the hook still in its mouth. Eventually my dad came over to release it, but at this point the fish was too far gone. It drifted lifelessly through the water before disappearing from view. While still alive at that point it looked extremely unwell, and as much as I wanted to think it survived the several minutes it spent on land, the next morning when I walked in the same area and saw a dead fish near the edge of the lake, it confirmed what I already knew: we’d caused this fish undue suffering, just for fun. Fishing never seemed like a violent activity when I went as a kid. Unlike hunting, which usually involved guns and meant killing deer and other furry mammals that were anthropomorphized in the TV shows I liked to watch, fishing was more like a meditation. It involved repetitive motion, casting over and over again without the promise of catching a thing, all while standing quietly at the edge of a body of water. And if I did end up catching a fish, it felt different than killing a mammal, who was warm-blooded like me. Fish were otherworldly, literally, and I’d always been told – they’d always been treated – as something less than a four-legged animal, certainly something less than a two-legged one. The fish tanks I had growing up proved this point: when one of my fish died, we’d flush it down the toilet without a second thought. When my childhood dog died, I cried for days. But accidentally killing the fish at that alpine lake changed something for me. Fishing was no longer a carefree activity, one where you could just catch and release, no harm, no foul. Catching and releasing a fish now seemed high risk. If it swallowed the hook too deep or you stressed it out too much in the short time it spent out of water, you could end up killing it. Even keeping the fish for food felt like a meager reward for the suffering I watched these animals – so different from humans yet still awesome in their own way – endure on their way to my plate. I don’t write any of this to condemn angling or hunting. If we must eat meat, harvesting it from the outdoors yourself is usually the best way to do it, rather than relying on meat sourced from factory farms serviced by poorly paid farmworkers. As I got older, the cost of creature-suffering at my own hands felt too high a price to pay, and eventually I became a vegetarian. I swore I’d never go back to eating animals unless I’d caught and killed them myself, and so far I’ve proved far too weak to stomach that. But even now, more than a decade since I cast my last reel, I still miss fishing. I suspect I always will. Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/for-the-love-of-fishing/2025/07/30/ Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/