My right shoulder was burning, it had just started to rain, and Wayne Wu was not going to help me reel in the fish.
Miles off the coast of Southeast Alaska, I could barely make out the mountains and the spindly spruces of Tongass National Forest. Wu, my fishing guide, had just stepped into the boat’s cabin to see if he could tune into the classic rock station this far offshore when the lingcod bit. I’d been jigging—bouncing a lead sinker and hook threaded with a white rubber squid off the bottom of the North Pacific, trying not to get it caught in the rocks—and then suddenly the line was being pulled away, the reel clicking as it went.
I wedged the pole into my hip and tried not to panic. “Reel! Reel!” yelled Wu (right), charging onto the deck and reaching across to reposition my hands. Then he stepped back, and it was just me, an absurdly heavy, prehistoric sea monster of a fish, and 1,000 or so feet of line to haul in, one agonizing inch at a time.
Later, when I was grinning for a photo on the dock, gripping the lingcod behind the eyeballs—to avoid the barbed gills, of course—I’d realize it was the first time in months that I didn’t feel helpless.
In the first year of the pandemic, I learned to fish. In July, at the invitation of Steamboat Bay Fishing Club, (and carrying proof of multiple negative COVID-19 tests), I took commercial flights, ferries, and floatplanes to the otherwise-uninhabited Noyes Island, on the western edge of Alaska’s Inside Passage. Four straight days of fishing rewarded me with enough king salmon, halibut, black bass, and lingcod to keep my freezer full for months. They also left me feeling exhilarated, and deeply capable.
During months marred by overwhelming loss, learning to fish made me feel like I was gaining something. And while my time on the water was spent mostly, blessedly, away from other people, I’m certainly not alone in my new hobby. After years of declining numbers, fish and game departments across the country reported unprecedented spikes in fishing license purchases. In Wisconsin, more than a million people purchased licenses, a jump of 18 percent. Increases were similar in Pennsylvania, Idaho, Washington, and many other states. In California, more residents bought fishing licenses than in any year since 2008.
While most industries struggled, this one thrived: In many places, sales of boats, bait, and tackle reached all-time highs. It was a banner year, according to the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, and of the millions who dropped a line in 2020, more than half were brand-new to the sport.
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Just as the leaves were beginning to turn, in a mountain stream outside Sevierville, Tennessee, I learned—by trial and a lot of error—to fly-fish and thus earned myself an afternoon-long respite from the constant risk-assessment of pandemic living.
Credit the calming, repetitive nature of the cast. Neurobiology researchers at Harvard University have compared fly-fishing to meditation; both require performing a basic motion, over and over, sometimes for hours. For years, neuroscientist Sara Lazar and her research team at Harvard’s Lazar Lab have examined the impact of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga on the brain. Their studies have found that it reduces depression and anxiety, makes people more capable of handling adversity, and builds resilience.
As soon as I started to feel like I’d figured out the swing, a fish began splashing around in an eddy on the far side of the river. I couldn’t throw my line far enough, but I kept trying, wading further out and learning, with each cast, how to roll my wrist and point the rod tip, aiming my fly just ahead of where I thought his mouth ought to be.
The fish didn’t intend to be caught—I’m apt to think he knew I was a rookie and was just messing with me—but waist-deep in a warm Appalachian river, I stopped thinking about the pandemic. I stopped thinking about everything, and the undercurrent of fear ebbed away.
One of the studies conducted by Lazar and her colleagues examined the amygdala—the quarter-size part of the brain responsible for triggering the release of stress hormones and the fight-or-flight response. Stressed-out people were given brain scans and asked to participate in a mindfulness program. When it was over, they reported significantly lower levels of stress, and scans afterward evidenced literally shrunken amygdalas.
One day in the river did not change the physical makeup of my brain, but enough afternoons spent that way actually might. In a time of unrelenting anxiety, a meditative practice, whether it’s yoga or fly-fishing, makes for a powerful lifeline.
Just as the leaves were beginning to turn, in a mountain stream I learned—by trial and a lot of error—to fly-fish and thus earned myself an afternoon-long respite from the constant risk-assessment of pandemic living.
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“They’re a destructive invasive species, and this is an ecosystem service,” I told myself as I pinched a green crab between my fingers, snipping its legs and claws off with a pair of scissors before using it to bait my hook.
It was the last warm, sunny day of the year, and I was crouched on a breezy New Jersey jetty with my fisherman friend Rodney—each of us on our own slippery rock—dropping a crab-baited jig over and over for tautog.
There are more than 600 species of wrasse, and most of them are bright-hued, with technicolor spots and stripes. But unlike those cousins, the tautog, also known as the blackfish, is, well, black. It’s got a dull, splotchy body and puffy, protruding lips with snaggled teeth. On YouTube, there are tautog fishing videos with titles like “How to Catch the Ugliest Fish Alive.”
But Rodney loves them, so I drove to the beach with a pole, and he bought a bucket of invasive green crabs.
We spoke about big things. His dad was ill then—terminally so—and we talked about grief and mercy. But we talked like you do while you fish; long pauses and eyes on the rod tip, the conversation running somehow deeper with fewer words than it ever does away from the water.
According to the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation report, almost none of this year’s new anglers were fishing alone. Most were accompanied by their children, significant others, or friends. Fishing has always been a camaraderie-builder, and as we spent the year seeking out safe places to be together, for many, that meant heading for the water.
Other things call us to the water too.
“When I do guided meditations and I ask people to envision themselves in their happy place, nine times out of 10 it’s the beach,” says psychologist Roseann Capanna-Hodge. “Maybe it’s the warmth of the sun, the sound of the surf; it can be incredibly calming. It’s a place with a natural hypnotic effect.”
That’s not surprising: Countless studies show the mental health benefits of spending time outdoors. And even the one person in 10 who doesn’t choose the beach isn’t usually far from it, Capanna-Hodge adds. “When I say, ‘Where is your calmest place?’ it’s almost always outside.”
In the 1970s, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot identified fractals in nature—neat, geometric patterns in natural elements that initially appear rough, like the bark of a tree or the shape of a cloud. The rules of math apply to everything from ocean waves to clusters of stars, explains Florence Williams in her book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. “To understand fractal patterns at different scales, picture a trunk of a tree and a branch: They might contain the same angles as that same branch and a smaller branch, as well as the converging veins of the leaf on that branch,” she writes. “And so on. You can have fractals creating what looks like chaos.”
The human brain has evolved to be an incredibly sophisticated pattern-recognition machine. Not only are we likely seeing nature’s fractals on a subconscious level, but we’re also being constantly soothed by them. These patterns inherently make us feel safe, and when everything is in its place, we’re better able to relax.
Not only are we likely seeing nature’s fractals on a subconscious level, but we’re also being constantly soothed by them. These patterns inherently make us feel safe, and when everything is in its place, we’re better able to relax.
“When you’re out there,” Capanna-Hodge says, “you’re aligning yourself with a regulated world. There’s a peacefulness in that. It has a rhythm. We become part of that hum, and nature regulates us too.”
Perhaps it’s even simpler than all that. Fishing, I think, is a personal festival of renewal. It’s a reverent observance of the earth going on: Years pass, bad things happen, rivers run, and the fish come back.
Maybe that’s what we’re chasing—me and my millions of new pole-wielding pals. Or maybe it’s a desire for the security and sense of self-sufficiency in the face of chaos that comes with capability. While I’m no master angler, I can put good food on my table in a pinch.
Maybe it’s the camaraderie, or the psychological benefits of being away from other people, out in a wild place with nature’s soothing fractals as a backdrop. But essentially, I think it boils down to this: While fishing, I feel safe in the world again.
It’s a pursuit that doesn’t take much—a body of water, a pole, and some line—but it does require things of you. Focus, and mindfulness, a quiet composure and confidence. And a willingness to cast, and cast again, and again, and again. It’s simple and useful, this thing I learned in the first year of the pandemic and am carrying with me into the next.
The thing about fishing, perhaps the most elemental thing, is that it requires you to hope.
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