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“Many fish bites if ya gots good bait.” Taj Mahal, “Fishin’ Blues”

As hobbies, er, obsessions go, I guess fishing is no stranger than any other.
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As hobbies, er, obsessions go, I guess fishing is no stranger than any other. This is not to say it isn't littered with whackos, rituals and just plain weirdness, but then what obsession isn't?

There is, however, security in numbers, and fishing is still the most widely practiced sport, hobby, distraction, time-waster in the world. It fulfills man's primal instincts to challenge nature, secure food and get things tangled up beyond hope.

Some people believe fishing is a metaphor for life. They are not fishermen; they are philosophers. Fishermen believe life is a metaphor for fishing. Fishermen - myself included - are fools. And any body of water filled with even the hope of a promise of fish, is a Fool's Paradise.

Of course this is not to be confused with the magnitude of foolishness our premier fool, Rear Entry Campbell, is messing around with, allowing monied interests to continue threatening B.C.'s wild salmon stocks with their ever-growing fish farms off the coast of Paradise. But then, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we know what kind of man he is, we're just dickering over how big a fool he is. But I digress.

While I don't want to exclude women from anything, least of all fishing, at its very soul, fishing is a guy thing. Anything that involves that much pointless sitting around waiting for something to happen is, by definition, a guy thing. I think women would agree with that.

Fishing is one of those ironic activities that both define the cosmic essence of being a guy and at the same time undermine guyness in at least two significant ways. It has become a standing joke that guys are incapable of distinguishing between or naming more than six colours: red, green, blue, purple, orange and yellow. Women, on the other hand, can name at least six variations of an infinite number of colours, many of which only exist in cosmetics, home furnishings and seasonally changing fashion accessories.

This grossly unfair stereotype of colour-challenged manhood flies out the window as soon as a guy walks into a shop filled with fishing stuff, ironically called tackle. Standing before a wall of feathers, fluff, glass beads, plastic worms and brightly coloured bits of aluminum, a guy can suddenly distinguish between subtle shades of tan, olive, ecru, pink, fuchsia, lavender and, yes, even teal. All he has to do to accomplish this amazing transition in colour perception is - wait for it - think like a fish.

And if fishing destroys the myth of guys and colourblindness, it also lays waste to the generally held notion that guys don't accessorize. One need only observe a guy's progression of fishing accessories to understand how wrong that mean-spirited slander really is.

A young boy starts his journey on the road to becoming a fisherman with simple, unpretentious gear - a pole, a hook, a worm and maybe a red and white bobber. If he's been taken to the right place, shown the path of true patience and can sit still for more than five minutes without completely losing interest or whipping out his cellphone, he eventually feels the rod come alive in his tiny hands and, with a bit more luck, lands his first fish and receives his first Real Guy Lesson: You catch it, you clean it.

But the siren song of accessories, the primitive, oft-concealed, guy need to have one of everything no matter how absurd, is the only possible explanation for the lifelong transformation of that young boy and his simple pole into a grown man with an $18,000 plastic bass boat, several steamer trunks full of lures, lines and flies, specialized rods for every occasion, a closetful of fishing attire far more coordinated than the rest of his wardrobe and a special Orvis edition SUV to lug the whole affair around.

Which is not to say this is a bad thing. Fishing, like baseball, is one of those arenas where grown men seem able to actually reach out and connect with their children in some more meaningful way than slipping them a $20 bill along with the keys to the family car. At least they can if they manage to hold their own frustration in check for longer than 10 minutes. A fishing trip, whether a day or a week, is a time to pass on values, traditions, family lore, misconceptions and just plain wrongheaded notions as well as meaningful life lessons.

This Sunday is Father's Day and to foster this passing of the guy torch to the next generation, the fishin's free in B.C., no license needed.

If my father were here I'd try dragging him out there for the day. Without actually thanking him out loud - I am a guy after all - I'd remind him how much fun we had on fishing trips in Arizona's White Mountains. Undoubtedly I'd reminisce about one memorable ride home when a sudden rainstorm turned the mule trail-cum highway snaking down the Gila River gorge into something resembling a carnival ride.

If you've never experienced a storm in desert mountains it's hard to imagine. From sunny to apocalyptic in less time than it takes to make sure you haven't misspelled apocalyptic, the mountains go from smiling and solid to sullen, dark and semi-fluid as runoff creates instant streams cascading down onto, and across, the highway.

On this day, water flowed at near the speed of the car. Mud and rocks were losing their hold on the hillside above and joining us in the race to the bottom. Thunder thundered and lightning lit a sky turned the colour of a three-day-old bruise.

I'm not sure what possessed me, sitting in the back seat, to choose that exact moment to blow up and pop my empty potato chip bag. But with both my father's hands death-gripping the steering wheel of our trusty station wagon and with his full attention straining to see the road through rain-streaked windows, I did... loudly.

I don't know if he thought a rock hit the car or a tire blew, but I'm sure he saw our immediate future involve plummeting into the bottomless gorge below, our sun-bleached bones being discovered only years later. He may have soiled himself. Having been fishing for several days in the discomfort of relaxed, guy hygiene, the rest of us wouldn't have noticed.

It was one of those events that only becomes funny with the passage of time and all I can say about it now is what I said in my defense at the time, "Good one, eh Dad?"

Age and health are conspiring to make this maybe our last Father's Day and to keep me further away than I'd like to be. So, happy Father's Day, Dad; wish I was there.