Fishing gets Extreme
Fishing is a very serene and peaceful pastime. It is usually a couple of people sitting in a boat with a couple of fishing rods in hand, just chilling out, maybe reading a book or listening to music. The sport is not so peaceful for the fish involved that gets a massive hook stuck in their mouths and are dragged out of the water very violently and left to die on the boat. Fishing has been around for many years and now it is time for the fish to fight back.
A show that is shown on the Discovery Channel is called Extreme Fishing. It revolves around two guys who go after some of the world’s most deadly fish. They often wrestle with the fish to subdue them; it can be seen with all kinds of crazy equipment and are often hurt in the process.
What is great about the show is that it gives the fish a fighting chance, and a lot of people are rooting for the fish to give the two presenters a good beating and swim away. Now this is real fishing, the kind that takes one back to ancient times when fishing was done with a spear in hand and the fisherman knee deep in the water waiting for fish to arrive. In this kind of fishing the fish had a chance of surviving and it was a case of man versus beast, fish if you want to get technical about it. Fishing was also caught with bear hands and people would dive into the water and catch a fish after struggling with it for a good while. This again showed how intense the sport could get and back then it usually wasn’t even a sport but the fish were being caught as sustenance. Now a days fishing seems to be the lazy person’s activity with a boat and a book and a fishing pole doing most of the work for them.
We need to go back to the old days of fishing by hand; now that would be a great competitor sport to watch. The fish wouldn’t even have to die in the process. Picture the scenario; two teams of fishermen stand at the edge of a pool filled with an array of different fish, some small, some large and some pretty dangerous. The buzzer sounds and two members of each team are off, they dive into the pool of water and start fighting with the fish. One person has got hold of a rather large fish and is rolling around in the water. The other person seeing this and not to be outdone, grabs hold of a fish swimming by but it slips out of the person’s grip. He then dives after the fish and manages to grab hold of it again, but this time many other fish swim by and distract him, who once again lets go of the fish. By this time the first person has gotten a hold of the large fish and is struggling to get it out of the water. The umpire is watching all this and keeping tabs on the score and the time. Each team member has 5 minutes to catch as many fish as they can and drag them or carry them out of the pool. With the clock winding down the first person has managed to drag this behemoth of a fish out of the tank and has scored 10 points for his/her team. The other is still struggling with the much smaller fish and gets no points as the round come to an end.
Can what is described above actually become reality? Would people watch a sport such as this and could it become so popular that it becomes a proper regulation sport governed by some fishing organisation? Who knows, but one thing is for sure, a sport like that would be great fun to watch and also take part in. It could become an alternative and humane method to catching fish. Because people love fishing so much, it shouldn’t be taken away from them but maybe modified and adapted to be able to give the fish a fighting chance as well. In the process if a new and exciting game can be invented, then that will be great.
Tags: