A Round of Fish-Golf, Anyone?
Fishing is a lot like golfing, but with larger scores and higher divorce rates.
It is with great sadness that I inform you I have been banned for life from the Hampton County Country Club. Apparently, one golf ball in the water hazard is merely a stroke penalty –636 golf balls in the ponds constitute water pollution and a wetlands mitigation issue that involves the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Perhaps I should just stick with fishing.
When you really stop to ponder it, though, golf and fishing have many disturbing similarities. On the golf course, guys like me usually have a 4 handicap or higher. On the fishing holes, I also have a handicap of 4: 1 wife, 2 small children, and 1 dog who loves water but hates to listen to commands.
Just as there is a club for every shot in golf, there is a rod or pole for every fishing scenario. Need to make a long cast into those lily pads? Reach for your high-performance baitcasting rod-and-reel combo. Need to skim a top water plug over the surface ever so subtly for those finicky trout? Grasp that favorite fly rod that your father handed down to you. Need to fish around that stump in the swamp, where there are tree branches and submerged roots and you’re 100-percent certain to hang up and break your line or pole? Reach for your wife’s favorite, girly pink fishing pole when she isn’t looking.
Golfers must do a bit of math to tally their scores, strokes under par, etc., and so do fishermen. For most anglers this involves simple addition, one fish plus one fish equals two, but because of my more advanced style of fishing, I must rely on higher forms of mathematics such as multiplication, algebra, calculus, and statistics, to keep track of my score. For every fish I land, I multiply it by three before I reach the bank and begin bragging about my catch. I feel that this is not a sin because my Lord and Savior once did some multiplication with some bread and fishes, and it all worked out well for Him and everyone else involved. But I also have to factor in the number of fish that got away but should have been caught, or all those that would have been released because they were too monstrous to fit into my cooler (that’s called solving for the unknown X-factor, for all you novice algebra students) and then add that number to my total. It’s a complicated system that requires a scientific calculator in my tackle box, but it works for me.
Just like in golfing, occasionally I will “shank” my cast into the nearest trees and never see my favorite lure again. Even more frequently, I’ll “hook” my cast the other way, usually in the direction of my fishing/marriage partner, who is already a little red-faced about her best bream pole being broken in two. But it’s hard to declare a “mulligan” and do-over your cast properly when your spouse has a new treble-hook “earring” hanging from one bloody earlobe and a mariticidal look on her face.
The ultimate shot in golf is, of course, the “hole in one” in which the golfer knocks the ball into the hole with one skillful whack. In fishing, a hole in one is when a lucky angler pulls a nice keeper out of a fishing hole with only one cast – and boy, it’s a beautiful thing when it happens to you and not your fishing partner! And, like golf, the thrill of gloating about it to your loser partner is an equally beautiful thing. But I just wish the wife wouldn’t do it in front of the kids and the dog.
I’m more of a Par 5 guy – which means it usually takes me four lost lures and one broken line to get the fish out of the hole. Occasionally, I will go for a “Birdie” or an “Eagle,” which means I won’t nab any fish around that hole at all, but I will hook an innocent egret or an osprey just flying by minding its own business. And from time to time, I’ll even “Bogey” a hole, meaning I’ll fish for an hour in one spot, lose about $20 worth of fishing tackle, then teach my small children some spicy new vocabulary words and paddle away in disgust and self-loathing.
It sure is a shame about the Country Club, though. They had the most alluring, pristine water hazards, that call to me like a siren’s song. I wonder if there are any fish in there…I wonder if my canoe will fit atop a golf cart…But more importantly, I wonder if they have a security guard at night….
Who knows, perhaps I can add to my underwater score of 636.
