I'm watching some tv show in which the host has to fish up catfish in a narrow canoe, and how several people who do this to survive have died catfishing (we'll pretend it's a word).
It got me thinking -- what are a fish's last moments like? Here's what I decided:
So you're swimming along, maybe with your lady friend, thinking your fishy thoughts (whatever those are), when something that looks absolutely delicious and mouth-wateringly tantalizing suddenly plops into view.
Like this. Mmm. Soft but satisfying. Yes, these are real. My stepdad and I used to use something like these when we went fishing.
So you swim on up and are just about to devour that delicate, delicious morsel, when all of a sudden -- OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT IT'S SHARP AND IT HURTS -- you've been hooked. Grats -- now you have a sharp (usually barbed, typically made of metal) hook in your mouth. Your delicious salmon roe was merely a fiendish disguise, shamelessly bent on your death.
Now you're being pulled through the water by a string you didn't even see before. How did you not see it? How could you be so stupid? Where are you going? What's that dark, looming shadow on the surface? Why is the surface getting closer? What's on the other side? OH GOD THE OTHER SIDE ISN'T MADE OF BREATHING
Oh yeah. By the way? If you're being caught by salmon roe, underwater, that means you're not a fish typically caught by fly-fishing, so you've probably only had very limited experience with the bright, shimmering, now-taking-on-mystical-properties Surface. So yeah. Now you can't breathe, your wonderful lunch date suddenly ruined and a piece of metal sticking through your lip (if you're lucky -- you may have swallowed it, which is even less fun).
If you struggle you might free yourself! Maybe you should struggle! Get away! GET AWAY GET AWAY GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAYFLAILFLAILFLAIL
By now everything's going dark. You're asphyxiating with a barbed hook in your mouth. Life's just dandy, especially if they take the hook out. Now your giant weird-looking air-breathing evil captors have a choice: they can either let you die of lack of air (read: "water") on the bottom of the boat / the boards of the dock, or they can drop you in a bucket full of water and other fish.
If they do put you in a bucket, your life will get increasingly fun (after the scant compensation of a few measly, probably stale, still-cold eggs -- at least they're "Soft but Satisfying!") as you struggle to breathe. Each fish requires so much oxygen, and at a certain point, the water's surface won't be a large enough area to pass enough oxygen into the water. You will become slow and sluggish until the fisher takes you out of the bucket, at which point you may be too weak to struggle, so that you can be bludgeoned to death. Hopefully it'll only be a single sharp whack to the skull with a fish bat.
My friend prefers to fish for her own fish rather than buying from a supermarket not in support of local economy, not to save money, not for the peace or relaxation of it, but because "it's more humane."
Yeah. Seriously.
