What’s My Line? Well, There’s a Big Catch Here But it Isn’t Fish

Fish have always had an almost mythical quality to me. Restaurants serve them and markets sell them. These must be modern day equivalents of the Biblical miracle of the loaves and fishes.

You see, I have never been convinced that fish exist in a natural state.

In the 12 years I have lived in San Diego, I have fished in numerous lakes hereabouts. I have caught five fish, all the same morning a couple of years ago in Doane Pond. I still suspect my son hired a diver to lurk in the weeds and place the fish on my hook.

In truth, I am not a fanatic about attempting to catch fish. I get out maybe once or twice a year, or about as often as aforementioned son sells me on the value of such shared experiences.

However, I remain intrigued when I hear about sure-fire ways to catch fish. I do not embrace them readily, any more than I would a can’t-miss cure for a widening bald spot.

With the Western Fishing Tackle and Boat Show at the Del Mar Fairgrounds this week, I decided to see what other people might be using to catch fish these days. At worst, I might find a couple of lures with barbless hooks my wife might wear as earrings.

I am so inept at anything involving fishing that I almost didn’t get into the gate. Somehow, as I walked away from the box office, I managed to drop my ticket. I was retracing my steps, looking at the ground, when a hand reached out with a ticket in it.

“I thought I’d see you again,” a voice said.

The man had been a couple of spots behind me in line. He was right. I wasn’t going anywhere without the ticket. What struck me later was that he could have picked up my ticket and gotten in free, rather than waiting until after he paid for his ticket.

I thanked him, but not enough.

Then I went through the gate and ran into Steve Garvey. I didn’t recognize him for a second. You know how you tend to associate people with where you expect to see them? I didn’t expect to see Steve Garvey at a fishing tackle show.

“Can I have your autograph?” he asked.

I laughed . . . and asked what a guy like him was doing in a place like this. I should have known. After all, he does have one of those Gowdyesque celebrity outdoor shows. He was working on arrangements for a fishing trip to Alaska.

Fishing, I explained, is something I do infrequently and with virtually no success.

“Hey,” he said, “I was watching this guy casting a few minutes ago in a fish tank they have by the other hall. He was saying how fish just love this lure and he pulls it by them and the fish go like this . . . “

Garvey put his finger next to his nose, kind of like Jim McMahon might do, and made a face like a kid looking at a plate of spinach.

The fish would have none of it. It didn’t surprise me at all.

And so I followed Garvey’s direction and headed toward the fish tank. However, I was distracted along the way by a commotion from a different direction.

A bunch of tykes with fishing poles were standing on a little platform alongside one of those above-the-ground pools. I smiled. It was a nice way to keep them occupied for awhile.

And then I noticed something.

They were catching fish . Not sporadically. One after another.

They were doing absolutely everything wrong. They were jumping up and down. They were squealing. They were paying absolutely no attention to their rods. And they were catching nice-sized trout.

“What if there are sharks in here?” one concerned youngster asked his mother.

I didn’t hear what the mother said, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the urchins hooked up a marlin the way they were going.

Enough of this. I went over to the fish tank to watch the pros do it. I was prepared to smirk when the fish snubbed some barrel-bellied fisherman with a sure-fire lure.

What I found was a petite blonde woman standing atop a platform whipping a fly line over a glass-sided tank. I also found an animated group of people sitting in grandstands and watching a transparent plastic worm slip down toward a group of fish.

“The big one’s right there,” they yelled. “Hit it! Hit it! Come on! Hit it!”

The big one, having been smart enough to grow to be a big one, let it go. However, another one struck quickly.

“Now,” she said, “I’m going to show you how to get a fish to spit the hook.”

I turned away. I was already an expert on that.

As I walked through the hall looking at lures and rods and reels, I was disconcerted. It nagged at me that I had caught five fish in 12 years and a bunch of kids had caught 12 fish in five minutes . . . and then the fisherwoman had the audacity to suggest there was a trick to losing a fish from a hook.

I left.

Nothing could possibly be of help to me.

On the way home, I stopped at the market . . . and bought a steak.