Does an anxious fisherman exist? First, I must define anxious and the meaning of the term in the question posed. By anxious we mean stressed out, angry, grouchy, testy, snappy, self absorbed, short tempered or just all around ill mannered in general. Now that anxious has been defined for the purpose of this article, I will pose the question once again. Does a anxious fisherman exist? It is not possible for a anxious fisherman to exist as I will explain.



While standing in a favorite trout stream casting to rising trout on Saturday morning, the stressful meeting with your boss on Friday becomes a distant memory. So you missed that deadline, all that concerns you now is the fat rainbow stalking the pool below the riffles. Anxious trout fisherman do not exist.

Sitting on the casting deck of your bass boat fishing at the local reservoir, a fleeting thought of the wife mentioning something about yard work and sleeping on the sofa crosses your mind but is quickly placed in your mental file thirteen. More pressing is the GPS announcing your arrival over your favorite rocky point where the bass love jig-n-pigs bounced along the rocks. Anxious bass fisherman do not exist.

It is April and slab crappie are on the spawning beds with perfect weather. The tobacco spitting bait shop owner just told you the crappie are hitting a jig and live minnow combo as he filled your minnow buckets. Thoughts of medieval torture devices and how to best apply them for use on the Internal Revenue Service director rapidly evaporate as you try to remember the location of the brush pile you fished last spring. There are no anxious crappie fisherman.

The canoe glides slowly through the water as you quietly approach that weed bed you know is a favorite haunt for feisty smallmouth bass. On the other side of the weed bed is a long run, filled with half submerged logs and boulders used by smallmouth to ambush crayfish. The water pipe that busted in your upstairs bathroom last week, running for two hours before discovery, is long forgotten. Anxious smallmouth bass fisherman do not exist.

The only possibility for the existence of an anxious fisherman is the commercial fisherman but he really does not count. He fishes for income and this makes it work. So to answer our question we must ask again, does an anxious fisherman exist? Not likely.