You are everything you feel beside the river

Diamond Geezer ponders fishing:

I was out walking beside a particularly long lake at the weekend [...] and I noticed a heck of a lot of people out fishing. Every few yards another chair, another rod and another sprawled-out display of angling paraphernalia. And I thought two things. Why do people fish? And why are they all male?

I can't speak generally for anyone, but here's one woman's take.

I used to muck about in rivers and streams when I was a pre-teen, back in the days when children were out unsupervised all day (and no doubt some of them drowned, though I never heard of any). I learned to catch fish with bare hands, which for child's play is an amazingly satisfying skill. First you have to find your fish - camouflaged, shy, alert - wait for it, your hands already underwater so there is no splash. To lose yourself knee-deep in a stream pitting your wits against a wild creature in its own element is worth all the aching hands, wet wellingtons, muddy coat and the scolding when you get home. You learn to watch the fish very carefully, and learn patience and disappointment. And you distinguish species, "which are easiest and valueless to catch." Some people go into Big Chief I-Spy twitcher mode, but I knew we didn't have all those fish in our streams, so I didn't.

When I started getting pocket money and an even greater sense of self-importance I could do some proper fishing - bought a second-hand rod and a rubbishy reel. That's where the trouble starts. If you are going to be serious about fishing, you need fishing tackle. It gets expensive, nerdy and competitive, and I couldn't be bothered with all that. And you do it in proper places like the Brick Pits, where you have to stand on the bank because it's far too deep to wade in. There are rules for grown-up fishing - things like pitches and licences, which spoil the Rousseauian fun. And there seemed something faintly cheating about bait, and cruel about hooks. I was never persuaded that fish don't feel pain.

Anyway, I needed money to raid the junk shop every Saturday for second hand books.

Much later I had a boyfriend who was a keen fly fisherman. So I tried my hand too, and seemed to have a beginner's knack for casting. We fished chalk streams in Hampshire and Wales, Highland rivers, wildernesses. There's a fair bit of skill to it, and you can eat some at least of what you catch. Hot-smoking a trout you've just caught by the side of the loch where you just caught it satisfies something pretty primitive. But fly fishing is expensive, and some of the people who do it can be snobbish. (I wouldn't have minded going fishing with Ted Hughes though.)

I married someone opposed to blood sports.

Incidentally, I picked up a book on freshwater fish the other day and was shocked to see how many fish I guddled thoughtlessly out of the Waring and the Bain are now rare or endangered.

But to go back to DG's question: Why do people fish?

O, Sir, doubt not but that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a Trout with an artificial Fly ? a Trout ! that is more sharp-sighted than any Hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled Merlin is bold ? and yet, I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow, for a friend's breakfast: doubt not therefore, Sir, but that angling is an art, and an worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice: but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practiced it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.
Izaak Walton

And why are they all male?
I don't know. It sounds as if DG was witnessing a fishing match. That never appealed to me. The regimentation and competitiveness seems more about the technical side of things, rather as motor racing is more about the cars and driving them than about getting to a destination or even the journey. (You will find more women rally-driving than on the racing circuits.)

Angling may be said to be so like the Mathematicks, that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully, but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.
Izaak Walton

What I liked about fishing was being out of doors, hunting, that sense of being wild.

But the men with all their state-of-the-art tackle and half-dozen rods side by side on their rod rests (and what is it about rod rests? and bite buzzers? How disconnected is that?) do care about fish, in their own way. Here is (or was) Benson.