This summer I’ve spent a lot of time untangling fishing line, rethreading rods, and pulling hooks of various lures out of dock lines, clothing, and other objects that sadly were not perch, pike, or walleye. Luckily, no eyes, scalps, or other body parts were caught. Fishing line seemed to appear in the unlikeliest of places, clumps of it lassoing unsuspecting bystanders and the knots only tightened.
On the shores of northern Lake Huron where we make our annual return to my native waters, my son unearthed hundreds of rocks in search of worms and leeches, and my daughter’s cast improved by mid-August. Like many generations of fisherfolk, we didn’t catch much even after tromping into the bait shop, seeking guidance from those with finned and gilled wisdom, hoping their top picks for lures and jigs would do the trick. We tried trolling a channel that is well-known for beefy pike, and we still came up short. Small rock bass nibbled lines, but none were keepers.
It didn’t matter.
The kids kept fishing and fashioning their own stick rods after reels became such a jumbled mess, and I threw my hands up in defeat. Rarely would a whopper gnash at a fake worm and the entire hook, line, and rod would end up in the lake—it all happened so quickly—but it led to a successful diving and salvage operation. And, in case you’re wondering, that sneaky fish gets longer and mightier with each telling.
Many of us have childhood fishing memories, and perhaps you continue the tradition with your own children or grandchildren. I was never much into fishing myself, despite my father’s attempts at both the spin and fly rod. I’m more of a wave and cloud watcher, a paddler or rower, and always sneaking a chance to dip into a book. But as a parent, I’m happy to sit dockside and wrangle through the mess that is line and lure. Like much of parenthood, it’s a wild mixture of elation and defeat. As best I could, I tried to model patience when working through yet another jammed reel and stood at the ready with a net and encouraging words.
We live in an era where we’re sold the lie that life should now be frictionless. With a touch of a button or two, we’re connected to the world and all our best friends whom we’ve never met in real life. We don’t have to pluck out a credit card or cash to buy groceries, clothes, or even a washing machine. We don’t even have to leave our house for these items. In our pockets most of us carry powerful computers that run our lives yet often leave us feeling small, unworthy, and anxious. Many of us are eliminating any sort of friction, digital or real, by relying on generative AI technologies to create a personalized, one-sided romantic partner, write school papers or break-up letters, or quickly create one-dimensional art.
But fishing and raising kids is anything but friction-free. Oh sure, in the realm of parenting there are a lot of tricks and gimmicks sold to eliminate the friction but those are devices sold by the very same people who make parents angry online, eliminate jobs, and use unfathomable amounts of fresh drinking water to power their data centers. I’m sure there’s a lot better fishing technology than the kind we deployed, but we’re dealing with an old cabin and I’m certain the basic technique remains the same. While I eschew generative AI and a lot of the online/influencer/social spaces, I feel myself tempted by the ease of clicks and instant gratification. At our internet-free cabin, I challenged myself to keep the phone in airplane mode and stay offline.
With my kids, I watched hundreds of fish, most of them little, check out our bait and dart back into the shadows of our dock. We studied the current and waves and observed what the fish might do in a thunderstorm. When boredom or frustration set in, we secured the rods and took a dip in the water. Built sandcastles, skipped stones, and rated each other’s cannonball splashes.
It wasn’t friction-free. There were many temper tantrums, one bloody nose, too many ticks too count so I then, shrieking, said no more forays into the woods. At one point, I told my husband I simply surrendered to the fishing line knot mess. Surrender as in more of an acceptance and a deeper understanding that for as much as I wish I could whip the world into shape (the shape that I deep right and perfect), I’ll always hit a snag. Knots need tying and untying; hooks need baiting and releasing and discovering the lesson of life in the tangles and snags.
We delude ourselves when we want to eliminate friction, when the line feels too snagged to salvage. I claim no expertise or deeper love of fishing—that isn’t this kind of story—but perhaps, if I may be permitted to draw upon the wisdom of Norman Maclean’s lines about the connection between religion and fly fishing: faith-by-friction and joy can be found in little kids, little fish, and big knots.