Most of what I do in life is to provide Solutions To Obvious Problems That Hardly Anyone Notices, or “STOP THAT” for short.
Keen readers will notice right away that the first solution I need to provide for an obvious problem that hardly anyone notices, is to replace the word “notices” with a word that begins with a “T” to make my acronym make more sense.
But that puzzle will have to be solved another day, for there are much bigger puzzles with much more grandiose solutions awaiting us in these monumentally transient times! Namely: the fishing lure! Or, to put it more contextually: reinventing the fishing lure!
Yes, it’s time my friends. And I’ll tell you why. Have you ever noticed how, when you catch a salmon on a lure, it always has this look of absolute shock on its face? Wide-eyed, slack-jawed, with a scrunched-up front-of-its-face thingy?
I was thinking about this and realized that I, too, would probably have the same look if, while happily swimming upstream to my death with all my best buds, some hamburger comes floating enticingly by my face. And when I bite it (as I’m obviously going to do because it has cheese on it), I’m all of a sudden dealing with a super-intimidating gigantic hook ripping my face apart and being dragged into a dimension of reality that I had only read about but never truly believed existed.
Of course, that’s gonna be shocking! I started feeling really bad for all the salmon out there, so I wondered, is it time for a “woke” lure?
I picture a diorama on the end of the line instead of a lure. Like a small model kiosk you might see at a boat show or a school science fair. The diorama would have a small banner at the top that reads “Welcome all fish!” On a tiny little diorama table would sit a small bowl of whatever it is salmon eat (licorice?).
On the back wall of the diorama would be a small screen showing an image of you, the angler, allowing two-way communication between you and the fish.
This is where it gets interesting, for it is up to the angler to convince the fish to come back home with them and be eaten.
It’s instantly apparent that, given the right lighting, background music, and flavor of licorice, any salmon swimming by will have their interest piqued and happily approach the diorama to feed. This is where the savvy angler gets to match wits with the salmon.
“Hey! How’d you like me to owe you favour?!” could be an apt opening line. Or perhaps, “Ever wanted to feed a family of five but never got the opportunity?”
Or, “Hey, if you’re gonna die anyway, why not do it with steamed asparagus and make someone happy?” Another great one.
The trick is to be enticing, but also to be honest about what it is you’re really trying to do, which, of course, is to kill and eat the fish. Although this sounds easy, that’s probably because you’re overestimating your charm. Just like when you’ve had a few too many beers.
The idea behind all this is to allow the salmon to make up its own mind about being caught and not to force the salmon into doing something it really doesn’t want to do.
Once the salmon has decided that yes, indeed, it would like to become someone’s meal, then it merely fills out the minuscule paperwork and insurance papers with the salmon-friendly personalized pen provided at no extra cost, creates a login and password and attaches itself to the line to be reeled in.
The Diorama Lure – only on Haida Gwaii.