if fish could scream

The existential moment has arrived; you look at the fish, the fish looks at you.  Both are very present to one another (or at least feel it feels this way to me) but not equally.  I, human, have the responsibility for what happens next.  With the help of a few tools, I have forced this live creature out of its home and into what must be a horribly frightening and painful reality.  If there is any doubt of this it is erased as the fish flips and flops and spins desperately on your dangling line.  It is trying to survive, trying not to drown in the air into which you dragged it.  Nearly every time I hold a fish like this, dangling, twisting, gasping, I imagine the t-shirt I once saw (or heard bout and remember to have seen) that said “what if fish could scream”.  If fish could scream, I’m not sure I could do this.  The silence somehow makes it easier for me to endure -- and I mean it when I say endure, I hate this part.  I start to sweat, my hands start to shake, I start to feel nauseous.  There is something very real about this experience, the intensity of it I suppose, that makes my reactions a strongly visceral one. Even writing about catching a fish makes me feel a little sick to my stomach.   

As you hold the dangling fish, his slimy skin glistening various shades of colour and his prickly scales and fins exposed, you soon realize that whether you like it or not, you have to do something.  You are compelled not to think or to wish or to imagine but to act, and as much as you desire that this was not the case, that you could just abandon your responsibility, you know, deep down, that even the inaction to which you are inclined is an act that perpetuates suffering and that the time you take to think about such things is time that he, your fish that you are hurting is struggling more and more.  You must proceed.  

The first thing is to figure out whether he -- and somehow in my mind it is always a he -- is a keeper.  I don’t fish for fun.  It is not in the category of fun for me.  I fish so I can catch dinner.  And I have to figure out whether this guy is large enough to warrant his murder.   After his suitability is assessed, the next question is where and how deeply your catch has been hooked?  It is always a relief to me when I can see the hook in his lip.  This means a (relatively) straightforward hook removal since dislodging requires that you make the hook exit the fish through the same path it entered it.  When the fish has swallowed your hook and the worm/minnow/fish that you used for bait, that causes real anxiety.  When you see that the fish is “gut hooked” you know that you will literally have to dig around in the fish’s mouth/stomach to get it out.  The deeper the hook, the greater the chance for damaging its organs and the lesser the chance for survival. 

Now comes a really tough moment for me -- one that I, before midway though this summer -- had previously in life refused to take part in; touching the fish with your bare hand.