02/22/2026
A Few Fishing Definitions
HOOK - (1) A curved piece of metal used to catch fish. (2) A clever advertisement used to lure a fisherman to spend his life's savings on fishing supplies. (3) The punch administered by said fisherman's wife after she learns what he spent their life's savings on. (Usually accompanied by word "right" or "left.")
LINE - Something you give your coworkers when they ask how your fishing trip went.
LURE - An object that dangles from the end of your fishing line and is supposed to encourage fish to bite it. It is the fisherman's equivalent of sports cards, comic books, buttons, lint, and other things you collect that generally have no purpose.
REEL - A weighted object that causes a rod to sink quickly when dropped overboard.
ROD - An attractively-painted length of fiberglass that keeps an angler from ever getting too close to a fish.
TACKLE - What your last catch did to you right after you brought him into the boat and right before he jumped back overboard.
TACKLE BOX - A box shaped alarmingly like a good first aid kit, only a tackle box carries an extremely large number of sharp objects, so that when you reach in blindly to grab an adhesive bandage, you soon find that you will need more than one.
TEST - (1) The amount of strength a fishing line affords an angler when fighting fish in a specific weight range. (2) A measure of your creativity when trying to come up with yet another explanation for why you have come home once again empty-handed.
