Everyone has something they’re passionate about, a hobby, a sport. Drawing, knitting, music, the list goes on. My passion is fishing. I’ve fished all my life. I like all types of fishing, bass fishing, striper fishing, tuna fishing, commercial fishing, etc. My life has been shaped to that of an outdoorsman. If I go for a week without fishing, I start to feel uncomfortable. Fishing has become an addiction. It’s like a drug. I’ve caught many fish in my life but still I go out to chase more. My addiction to fishing isn’t for the fish itself. I could care less about the animal. Instead, it’s the feeling of a bite on the end of my line that got me ‘hooked.’ Most things I do in life all center around the sport.
Massachusetts is where I call home. Fishing up there is some people’s way of life. Not long-ago fishing became my job. I became a commercial fisherman making my money out on the water. The hours are odd. Sometimes I wake up early in the morning to work, and sometimes I sleep all day so I can wake up at 6 p.m. to chase striped bass at night. As a commercial fisherman, I go out and target specific species, load up my boat with enough of them to pay for gas and other expenses, bring them to market and cash out. The cost of fish species fluctuates throughout the season. When the demand of fish is high and the supply is low the markets pay better. When the demand of fish is low and the supply is high the prices drop…a lot. Throughout my three years as a commercial fisherman, I’ve made a good salary every summer when I’m home, but fishing still costs money. It costs a lot of money.
Every day out on the boat I decide to buy my snacks, energy drinks, and lunch at a gas station while filling up the boat and truck. When I get off the water, I usually grab Taco Bell or Wendy’s for dinner. That’s just money I spend on food to keep me fishing. A better option would be for me to prepare food and snacks instead of buying it every day, but that’s a problem to deal with at another time. The amount of money I spend on tackle, equipment, the boat, and everything else that goes into actually catching the fish is an amount that I don’t keep track of because it is so much money that I can’t even think about doing the math. I don’t only fish at home though. As a student at Campbellsville, I’m a member of the Kayak Bass Fishing Team, where I also spend money on fishing equipment. I also am known to be very forgetful. The other week I went fishing on Cedar Creek Reservoir in Stanford, Kentucky, which is over an hour away from the school. While I was leaving the ramp, I forgot two of my rods that each had the reels and baits attached. One of those rods cost $200, the other $150, the reels each cost $150 the line on them over $25 a spool, and the spoon I had tied on was about $15, and the chatter bait on the other was $20. In the matter of a couple minutes spent at the ramp I lost $685. I didn’t realize I had made this mistake until I had gotten back to campus. I asked someone who lived near the boat ramp to check if the rods were there, but they were long gone.
Now that I have been fishing for as long as I have, I often wonder if gardening would have been a fun hobby to take up.
