My Love and Hate Relationship with Fishing

I like fishing. 

But when someone asks me about it, my answer is only conditional. “I like it, but…”

I like fishing but it is hard for me to say I like fishing in the community of the angling industry. 

What the love of fishing means in this industry is like this. 

You cannot go drinking on Fridays because you must leave my home at 3am. For example from Tokyo residential areas, you need at least a few hours to get to decent quality water.

More than 30% of photos in your mobile phone show fish and more than 50% are about fishing. Yes. Your fisherman friends send you photos of their fishing on WhatsApp and they are automatically saved in your phone, while you are sending out a lot to many friends.

Or you have an App on tide and your weather information site shows wind direction and wind speed page first. You know the best thing to do is to go where fish are.

I am a little bit different.

I like to go fishing. Often I do not care about catching fish.

Maybe I like to cast lures and to watch my top water lure moves on the water. And I love to be there. I am satisfied after spending a few hours near the water.

It is very important for us to understand there are various ways to enjoy fishing. You may say catching fish is the core of the fishing tackle industry. Yes. It is right. We could never survive if there were no fish. However, adding some different values into fishing activity gives us hints to have fun. 

One good example from the US is Heddon’s Big Bud Lure.

Why do you pick a can of beer for the lure design? It is just fun!

Another example is this lure from Japan.

Dinosaurs do not exist on the earth and never be a bait of the fish. I met the designer of these lures and his idea was to make fishing more enjoyable and fun, with something unique.

Furthermore, there are brands that promote their brands, stemming from fishing. Like Japanese brand DRESS, of the picture below.

One of my colleagues told me that he was thinking about the style while fishing. For this young man, what to wear to go fishing is very important.

This is the crossover between the pure fishing side and the side of normal life. So called life-style products are the key for some groups of anglers.

In this life-style categories, what matters are more stories than pure functional features. This is the area where the fashion industry is fighting. 

For me fishing is fun, not even without a fish. It is even better with fish, of course (LOL.) 

And what attracts me more is the business of fishing. Now that I can see the crossover futures of the fishing tackle industry, I am sure that it is going to be more interesting.

Now, let us ask ourselves “Do you like fishing?”