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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

COLUMN: Spare the rod

Fishing runs in the family, but it stops with me

When it comes to my dad’s side of the family, it is obvious they’re good people — the classic, friendly, loud, Catholic Midwestern stock. We are all still able to come together to laugh, drink and have a good time.

Yet, we definitely differ. The fact I never made it to an IU basketball game during my four years as a student in Bloomington might be a little soul-crushing to some ?of my kin.

This time of year reminds me how much I do not share House Leeds’ love of motor sports. The activity has never held my spastic attention, as evident from my first ever Indy 500 event. I stuffed myself with Twinkies out of boredom and wretched my cream filling the moment my dad and I arrived home.

I risk driving another wedge between my family and me. I must come out as a Leeds who doesn’t like ?fishing.

I enjoy being outdoors. The idea of getting my hands dirty or slimy does not bother me either. It comes down purely to the absurd brutality that comes along with ?this activity.

Imagine you’re walking in the grocery store. There’s nothing special about the day, no need to be more cautious than usual. A member of staff approaches you, offering a platter of free samples. Yes, these look delicious. Of course you snatch up a sample. What could possibly go wrong? Suddenly, someone impales your lip with a piece of barbed metal. This hook drags you by the mouth into a back room where you’re waterboarded by strangers for what feels like an eternity. As suddenly as the horror starts, the barbed metal is yanked from your mouth, and you’re thrown sputtering back into the grocery store to resume your shopping as if nothing happened.

Pretty abrasive, huh?

People will go back and forth arguing whether or not fish feel pain or terror. To me, if they’re living organisms with basic survival instincts, they’re no stranger to either.

I don’t see the need to impose that sort of abuse on a living creature for selfish sport. And then consider the whole ritual if live bait is used and try to tell me the activity doesn’t seem a tad egregious.

You take your live bait — say it’s a worm — and you impale it along a hook. Then you throw it into the water while it is still writhing in agony. Now it’s impaled and in a substance in which it ?cannot breathe.

Next, that suffering life form is eaten alive — granted, that’s how it happens in the wild, but drowning and threaded onto a hook isn’t exactly giving it a fair fighting chance. Then the fish comes into play. The hook pierces the mouth and is used to tug the fish out of the water as it fights its faceless attacker when seconds ago it thought it was about to enjoy some sustenance. The fish is then dragged into the air — a state in which it cannot breathe — and gasps on the deck of the boat, wondering if this is going to be its dreadful, undignified end. Then the fish is thrown back into the water to be caught on another harrowing day.

But fishing isn’t about just traumatizing one fish and calling it a day. The recreational activity entails sitting around doing this to a fellow creature for hours and for amusement.

I’d maybe feel differently if the fish were being caught for food, making the activity about utility and not strange entertainment. I’m told fishing is truly about enjoying the fresh air, quiet and great outdoors.

If that is so, inflicting suffering upon the inhabitants of the nature you’re out there to appreciate is a strange way of enjoying it.

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