Big game fishing is something that has captured the imagination of the country for centuries. Fishing itself is thought to be a relaxing sport, but one quick look at someone trying to reel in a shark or fighting marlin dispels this notion; it can be really exciting and exhausting too! Authors of classical literature have not overlooked this dramatic side to the sport, and have often included instances of it in their work.
The most obvious example might be Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”. In this novel, an old sailor named Ahab becomes obsessed with the great white whale that took his leg in a previous encounter. Despite that he has both a wife and child, he has no desire in the world other than to find and kill Moby Dick.
Over the course of the novel, one learns a great deal about whaling and the kind of people who might take part in it. On the other hand, though, the real thrust of the novel is Ahab’s obsession and the depths to which it takes him and the rest of the crew. A nice reminder that life shouldn’t be squandered on a singular obsessive search, no matter the object.
Then, of course there’s Hemingway. A fisherman himself, Hemingway put all that he knew about the sport into his classic story, “The Old Man and the Sea”. Here, an old man has been down on his luck in fishing as of late and hasn’t caught a fish in more than a month. Both his livelihood and his life are at stake unless he can land something big.
Having not caught a fish for more than a month, Hemingway’s Old Man struggles not just for the sake of honor or his reputation as a fisherman, but rather for his life itself. There is a very real sense that the man will eventually die if he doesn’t succeed in his journey. Spanning many perilous days and nights, this story highlights the lengths to which humanity can, and sometimes must, go to find value.
Even the Bible chimes in with its own fishing story, and it too is a pretty good one. When the prophet Jonah hears the call of God, he attempts to shirk his duty by buying passage on a fishing vessel headed far away from his homeland. During the course of the voyage though, things do not go as planned.
This happens, of course, because he’s actually thrown overboard by his shipmates. It turns out that Jonah came on board the ship because he had been trying to escape God’s calling for him, and in doing so, had caused God to send many storms and other obstacles against the vessel. In the end, it is too much for the other shipmen, and they consign Jonah to his fate.
In the end, of course, just as Jonah is redeemed from the whale, so too does literature help to redeem big game fishing from its reputation as a purely relaxing or brutish sport. Instead, in the hands of capable authors, it becomes a thing of beauty, a grueling contest not just between man and nature, but between man and his own limitations.
Are you considering taking-up big game fishing as your next hobby? Check out our guide to big game rods for the ultimate inside scoop on amongst others Daiwa fishing rods.
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