An epic family day weekend.

My mom and bro came to visit for family day weekend. We fished, then fished, then fished again… I got sick and it was worth it.

I have never fished so hard in my life.

We enjoyed the outdoors, the trees, the rockfaces, the smell of the snow. We took pictures and made memories. All shared with family.

Yet…

I always feel a little uncomfortable taking photos holding fish. The adrenaline is pumping and you can taste the excitment. We’ve worked so hard for that one moment…we feel we deserve it and the sweetness of the moment tastes so good when we high-five our fellow anglers in action.

Yet there is a colonial feeling permeable in the air. Subdued, but there. Does the picture denote a sense that I have somehow conquered the fish? I struggle on and off with how I feel about fishing. I dont fish purely for recreation, I do eat them. But I often wonder if I gain too much satisfaction out of a moment that ultimately is about killing a life. I always get an anthroprocentric feeling about it.

Is stopping to say thank you enough? Is executing the kill in a humane way enough?

Or when we practice catch and release, did that beautiful photo on our desk jeopardize the fish’s chance of survival? Was it ethical to sacrifice a moment’s stress on that fish’s life for a moment of pleasure in ours?

Hank Shaw calls this the hunters paradox: loving what we kill. Shaw writes:

“I feel a deep kinship with the animals I hunt; most hunters do. We get to know them in a far deeper way than all but a few other sorts of human: We know their personalities, their foibles, their habits. Where they like to live, what they like to eat, and what they might do in any given situation.”

There is a certain joy in learning about the habitat of various fish. I begin to respect and admire them. The first lake trout I ever saw astonished me in its regal beauty. A sacred creature, nature’s art.

Yet I go on hunting them.

Shaw writes:

“…to live on planet Earth something else must die…. Dealing death is the business of life.

Many reject this notion as abhorrent. They ask themselves: Are we really no better than the lions on the Serengeti? Should not humanity stand for something at least slightly more grand than being the biggest, baddest pack of wolves on the planet? To such people, humanity’s highest purpose is to transcend the boundaries of the so-called animal world….

I suspect that the core of such criticism of what we do is an unnatural fear of death, a fear stoked by distance and ignorance. Citizens of the wealthiest nations of the world have created barriers between themselves and the commonplace reality of not only the deaths that their existence requires, but also their own mortality. Death is an abstraction, a goblin lurking inside the dark attic of their mind.”

From Shaw’s perspective, it could almost be anthropocentric NOT to kill other animals, in that we assume we are separate from them, or that somehow death is the ultimate sin rather than a fact of life.

Perhaps there is a difference between photographing the moment to mark our pride, rather than merely fishing for sustenance. But does a cat not bring her freshly hunted mouse to the door, parading with pride?

In the 21st century, dilemmas like these confuse me. Industrialisation has changed the way humans live and behave so drastically, have our instincts “caught up?” Can we reconcile our animalistic instincts with our current lifestyles? Or with the pressures of population growth and climate change? Should we?

I don’t know where I stand, but I’d welcome your thoughts. In the meantime, I go on fishing, but I commit to being appreciative, learning how to kill humanely, and knowing when to throw a fish back based on size or numbers.

Thank you Mother Earth for providing us with some amazing memories, and with the life of a fish for food. You have created so much beauty and I am grateful to witness and be a part of it.

And thanks to friends who share their resources and knowledge of this place with us so we can see it from new angles.