If social media started fact-checking the posts we dedicate to exaggerating our outdoor prowess, hunters and anglers would be out of business.
“There is, among hard-core fishermen, a conviction that the truth, like pure water and the fish that live in it, is a precious commodity, not to be squandered or overused.” – Ed Zern
Even great 19th Century scholars knew that, at times, outdoorsmen are less than honest. “Are all fishermen liars?” pondered Canadian scholar William Sherwood Fox. “Or do only liars fish?”
But the fishermen’s wives knew this even before those days of scholarly yore. “All fishermen are liars,” wrote Beatrice Cook. “It’s an occupational disease with them like housemaid’s knee or editor’s ulcers.”
But along came the Internet, and in today’s world of fake news and fact-checking in the media and on social media, the truth is now more than ever a much-sought-after and often evasive commodity. But what if Facebook, one of our favorite online hangouts to boast about our catches and kills and exaggerate our outdoor prowess, started fact-checking behind anglers and hunters like me?
We’d be out of business, that’s what!
It would be horrible. It may look something like this:
As you can see, fact-checking and verification have absolutely no business in the world of fishing or on the social media bragging pages of any outdoorsman, and we should continue to be governed by our own code of honor. Or, as Fox wrote, “Of all the liars among mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy.”
The Greatest Fishing Stories Ever Told is sure to ignite recollections of your own angling experiences as well as send your imagination adrift. In this compilation of tales you will read about two kinds of places, the ones you have been to before and love to remember, and the places you have only dreamed of going, and would love to visit. Whether you prefer to fish rivers, estuaries, or beaches, this book will take you to all kinds of water, where you’ll experience catching every kind of fish. Buy Now
