Six Things About Fishing They Never Tell You

I only started getting seriously into fishing about three years ago. Prior to that I was always sort of a tag-along going on simple trips with no gear of my own. It’s been a fun journey so far and I still look forward to more adventures and meeting new friends, but along the way I’ve realised some things about fishing that no one really tells you.

1. Fishing gets expensive

First you start off cheap. You don’t really know what to buy so you go for the crappy gear that wouldn’t break the bank. A 500-baht reel, a 300-baht rod and a small selection of lures and other tackle ought to do, right? Wrong.

Soon enough you will start realising that the cheap rods and reels break quite easily, the lures don’t catch any fish and the other tackle is just not enough. So you get a new rod and reel. This time of better quality, but then you realise that the rod’s stiffness is more appropriate for only topwater lures so you buy more lures to suit the rod’s purpose. But what about the fish that hang at other depths? So you buy a new rod. But then you realise that the cheap monofilament line you bought has too much stretch so you switch to the 500 baht a roll braided line so that the fish will not get away as easily. But then what tool do you use to get it out of the water? What camera will you buy to capture the moment? What sort of sun-proof clothing should you buy? What about that new wooden frog that’s all the rage these days?

_{This is a small portion of the spend.}

The list goes on. It never ends. Whether it is bait, lure or fly fishing, there’s always an opportunity to spend more money because you can never own enough toys as a fisherman. The fisherman starts from necessity and soon moves into excess. And that’s just gear. There’re also fees galore, for guides, boats, pond access and accommodation. There’s petrol prices, which leads us to the next thing…

2. There is usually a lot of driving and that’s pricey too

Unfortunately for me, I live in the heart of Bangkok city and that translates to stinky canals and a river lined up with shipping tankers, no hiding place for a trophy-sized giant snakehead. Sure it’s still fishable but it’s really not that great and is full of compromises.

Just driving to somewhere like Pilot 111 is already a 100-kilometre journey there and back. Doing that on a weekly basis really cuts into your pay cheque and that is a local drive. A drive to the reservoirs or the fishing piers can be anywhere from 200 to 800 kilometres worth of total driving.

Also this is Thailand; there are plenty of drunken idiots on the road. I’ve yet to have a cross-provincial trip where I didn’t have to witness a car accident. Heck, I even got rear-ended by a taxi driver who fell asleep at the wheel.

_{Remember this crash?}

As icing on the cake, with my being a person who is genetically predisposed to falling asleep at the wheel, driving these long distances can sometimes be a bit of a torture and potentially lethal. Just ask Doc. He has witnessed first-hand my falling asleep at the wheel with my eyes still open. It could have cost us our lives had he not woken me up. Speaking of sleep…

3. Your sleep patterns get all messed up and sleeping pills become your best friend

A regular person usually wakes up at around 6am to be able to leave the house by 7am in order to commute and reach work by 8am. Some who are luckier may have their schedules pushed to an hour later. A fisherman’s schedule is heavily restricted by many factors, his limited off days from work being one of them and which restricts his ability to make the best of his potential fishing hours. Most of the time the location will be far away and he will only have one free day to get there and fish, so he’ll have to wake up as early as 3am just so that he can drive all the way to another province to get to the fish by sunrise.

_{This makes life so much easier.}

With all the excitement of the trip it’s really hard to fall asleep. I have this problem every single time. After some experimenting and some accidental hallucinations I finally found the sleeping medication that worked for me and the tiredness that comes with never sleeping goes away. But because of these schedules, a fisherman is usually going to go through very long days, which leads us to…

4. Balancing fishing and other aspects of your life can get difficult

Fishing is a time-consuming activity. As mentioned above, there are only a certain amount of days a week a working man can go fishing, and then there’s the driving and early mornings. Add as well important dinner or birthday parties. Unfortunately, people don’t like throwing parties and social dinners on the weeknights and for the fisherman that means having to either pick between fishing or the party or both.

For a while it was not uncommon for me to go through the weekend with 35 consecutive waking hours. I’d go to sleep at 10pm on a Friday night only to be too excited to fall into slumber, get up at 4am Saturday morning from a sleepless night to leave the house at 4:30am in order to drive to the reservoir by 6am,  see the sunrise, fish in the sun all day, see the sunset, drive back to Bangkok, clean up and go out, say, to a best friend’s birthday party until 2am – oh but wait, he wants to go to an after-party, and so that means getting home by 4am Sunday, or 24 hours since I’d woken up.

5. Sometimes you fail, a lot

After going through all that trouble there’s the subject of failure. After all that driving, the sleepless nights, the money spent and hours upon hours standing in the sweltering sun you will, many a time, fail. You came a day late or a day too early. Or perhaps you didn’t buy the right lure. Or in your sleepiness only brought half your equipment. When you return to the city your friends ask the usual question: ‘So did you catch anything?’ To which you shrug and shamefully declare, ‘No, I didn’t catch anything.’

I’ve failed so many times. At one point it seemed the only logical thing to do was to quit and pick a less intense hobby. One that allowed for a normal schedule like everyone else and that costs a little less and maybe one that also has the occasional cute girl involved like yoga or painting. I started asking myself questions like, ‘Why am I still doing this? It friggin’ sucks!’ I failed so much I was seriously close to just dropping fishing and moving on but I didn’t and that’s because…

6. Success is sweet

Just like anything else in life, failure is like the rung of a ladder that needs to be climbed to reach success. For each time you fail, you get closer to the top even if it doesn’t seem that way. Even if it means more sleepless nights, more long drives and more money spent, it’s all okay. It gets easier and easier each time and soon enough you learn how to adjust your sleep patterns, you learn which gear to buy to succeed and not waste money, you learn to carpool with your friends to get places easier, you learn better techniques and improve your overall skill and most of all you land the fish of your dreams.

_{So, so sweet...}

I still remember my first sweet taste of true success. It was epic. After all the failing and all the sacrifices it finally paid off, and that was the first time I felt like all my efforts were worthwhile. No one had ever told me any of these things about fishing and if I had to do it all over again I would probably change a few things here and there. I’d probably start off with better gear and not go to as many parties. What about you, my fellow hookers? What are some of the things about fishing that no one ever told you? And what are some things you wish you could have told yourself based on what you know now?

For more on Oz's fishing adventures, visit http://bangkokhooker-fishing.com/.