Treasure the fine art of fishing lies
Robert Ruark, the finest outdoor writer this country has ever produced, had firm opinions when it came to fishing tales. He reckoned any man who insisted on being a stickler for accuracy when it came to the size of fish simply couldn’t be trusted.
I don’t know that I would go quite that far, but an angler who won’t stretch things a bit when it comes to the length and weight of a fine catch is a flat-out bore.
Let’s consider aspects of fishing tales, maybe rooted in truth but with a liberal sprinkling of exaggeration. One of the most common expressions in the vocabulary of fishermen is “I lost a good one.” Similarly, tales of broken lines, a hook pulling out at the last moment and similar misfortunes are integral parts of the sport.
A fellow who never mentions losing a fish is simply unreliable. He belongs in the same class as turkey hunters who say they never missed a gobbler.
Yet any fisherman who says he has lost one has, in effect, played loose with the truth. As Izaak Walton, the nearest thing fishing has to a patron saint, wrote long ago in the 16th century, “A man cannot lose what he never had.”
Through the years, I’ve used that tidbit of wisdom to good advantage countless times. I’ll ask a group at a seminar I’m presenting how many of them ever lost a good fish, and invariably almost every hand in the room shoots up. I then offer the thought that I’m in good company -- with practiced fishing liars -- and share Walton’s words.
The truth is we all enjoy telling tales of the “one that got away,” never mind that it involves innocent lying. My Grandpa Joe was a master of the art. He would have been appalled had anyone suggested he was untruthful. Had I dared venture into that forbidden territory, chances are I would have found myself dealing with the business end of a hickory switch. In fact, I remember all too well my one amateurish attempt at lying to Grandpa.
It didn’t involve fishing directly, although I had been digging fishing worms. Somehow I decided it would be fun to stop digging to torment two of his roosters. After all, one of them had attempted to flog me a few days earlier, and I was already in the chicken lot. Things fell apart. I got caught, tried to lie my way out of it and paid the price.
I stray a bit though. Grandpa Joe loved to tell fish tales, and no matter how many times he related a particular saga, each time was as different and distinctive as it was delightful. He believed in embroidering, did it wonderfully well, and kept his youthful audience of one entranced.
His favorite “one that got away” story involved a monstrous jackfish, the local name for muskies. Over the course of my passage through adolescence that fish grew from 4 feet in length to being at least as long as Grandpa was tall. Had he lived even longer than the four score plus years he enjoyed, I have no doubt the fish would have become the ultimate denizen of freshwater depths.
Through the years I’ve increasingly come to appreciate the fact that a really good fishing liar, one of Grandpa Joe’s ilk, is a skilled artist. He is a craftsman with words and often with gestures. (Grandpa could not talk without gesticulating, using his hands for emphasis and almost as visual punctuation marks.) He can work an audience, whether it’s a lone starry-eyed youngster of a room full of adults, like a pulpit-pounding tent-meeting preacher. Somehow he makes his stories seem credible even when, deep down, you know they are ranging widely in the realms of fiction.
In fact, fishing and fiction are inseparable, and an accomplished fishing liar is a fellow to be cultivated and a friend to be appreciated. He lightens your days and brightens your ways, and chances are he’s a salt-of- the-earth sort with whom you could trust all of your worldly goods.
On the other hand, any fisherman who refuses to embellish probably would embezzle funds from a widow’s pension or scoff at the very idea of Santa Claus. Who wants to deal with misguided misanthropes of this sort? Not me. I’ll take someone with whom time adds to size.
The value of a fine fishing liar needs to be recognized. He is a specialist, a master in his field and a sage dispenser of a special kind of wisdom well worth hearing and heeding. So the next time you hear a whopper, far from challenging it, relish the moment for the treasured occasion it is.
This story was originally published July 29, 2017 at 4:42 PM with the headline "Treasure the fine art of fishing lies."