By Tony Orman
I once read a very funny spoofy story in a very funny fishing book. It involved a survey by some mythical university on trout fishermen and wives. I’ve semi-plagiarised it below. I can’t recall the book now but I think it was titled “Grandfather Was a Trout”. I guess that title says it all?
There’s enough cobbly-wobbly advice given to wives of trout fishermen but a survey has now shown why wives don’t need any advice.
We trout fishers knew that all along. There’s a perception that non-fishing wives regard trout fishing with much inner amusement thus adding a factor to why women tend to giggle to themselves a lot. Others are inwardly impatient about it to the point of contempt.
But a new survey has given a deeper insight into the matter. The NZ Association for the Mental Well-being of Wives has found only one wife of 987 surveyed disputed her husband’s right to fish and only one thought her husband fished too much.
Chief Head Shrink Ebenezer Piscator said the survey’s findings were startling in many respects.
One Blenheim woman banned her husband from fishing. Before that, they fished together, she always catching more. Then one day he caught more than she did. She fumed. Then soon after, he caught a monster trout bigger than anything she had ever caught. She spat the dummy, cut his pocket money so he couldn’t buy any gear, forbade him using the car at all in case he sneaked off fishing and sent in a letter of his resignation to the Marlborough Freshwater Anglers Club.
Hen-pecked
Perhaps it was in his genes or stars but obviously he wanted to be henpecked and bullied. The club’s better off without the poor, snivelling soul.
Yet all is not totally lost with the little pitiful persecuted pillock, for in a spark of resistance he sneaked off eeling with the local kids using their gear. In return he umpired their soccer games. He was 75 and had run out of self respect and dignity.
But to the survey. It found 95 % of wives actually encouraged their husbands to go trout fishing. Psychological analysis of interviews showed the two starkly contrasting reasons were:-
1. The wife likes her husband and thinks fishing is good for him and that it would add years to his life.
2. The wife doesn’t like her husband and is glad to be rid of him as much as possible.
Further analysis of the second category showed two motivations:-
(a) The wife encouraged her dear husband to spend whole days on the river, even a weekend away. The more time fishing, the less she had to put up with him at home.
(b) The advanced stage of this was the wife sent husband fishing in the hope that he would get pulled in by a big trout and would drown, would get tossed by an angry jersey bull and stomped on, would get lost and perish in a blackberry thicket or would meet an amorous milk maid (like Izaak Walton the patron saint of angling did in the 17th century) and run away with her.
For Idiots?
Further analysis showed only 1% openly thought trout fishing was for idiots. As one said “There’s a fine line between going trout fishing and just standing with a pole and a bit of string tied to it.”
But of the remaining 99%, over 50% thought while thinking trout fishing definitely is for idiots, they would never admit it, as their husbands were better encouraged to be dabbling and dunking themselves in rivers than wandering the town streets or being a politician on the local council or worse still being a drone MP in the Beehive.
Thirty percent were indifferent, didn’t understand fishing or what their husbands did except they knew their men were away all day and always carried along some kind of long tomato stake, some string and something that looked like a whirly-gig. The men always returned, mostly fishless, hot and sweaty and wanting a cool beer and comforting, unfortunately too tired to mow the lawns.
Some wives were hard to classify. Eighty per cent felt their husbands were clumsy and bum fishermen but seemed happy for them to be trying. “Keeps him occupied out of harm’s way,” admitted one wife.
Only 5% felt their men were so hopeless they should give up trout fishing. Of the wives who fished too, 99.5% considered themselves far better trout fishers than their bumbling husbands. Only 0.5% reckoned their hubbies could out fish them.
Further analysis showed 80% felt their husbands were braggarts about their trout fishing, told grossly exaggerated stories about their days’ trout fishing, both in size of fish and number and suffered from the syndrome of “the big one got away,” and thus ought to quit fishing and be psychoanalysed by a head shrink.
This is all very confusing in many ways so I think I’ll go fishing and contemplate the findings – that is if the wife will let me.
