Fish or Cut Bait

What could possibly be a better activity for a retired person than fishing? Except I hesitate to call it an activity. Oh sure, you have to get yourself to where the fish are, and afterward get yourself home. But once there, and you've done whatever you need to do to prepare, like baiting hooks or tying a lure onto the line, then you do, well, nothing. Oh sure, you see fishermen pretending to do something, moving the line back and forth gently, staring intently at the water as if engaged in psychological warfare with their intended victims, but it's window dressing. The fisherman wants to look as if he's doing something, after all. The problem is that once he's caught a fish there's a flurry of really unpleasant activity, clubbing the poor helpless creature to death with the ferocity of an Abu Gahraib torturer, removing the hook from it's mouth, and then slicing it open and scooping out the guts. Genuinely nasty stuff. The best part is still when you're doing nothing. Now that I think about it, it's not the perfect retirement pastime, not when there are things like televisions and surfing the Net that allow a person to appear as if they're doing something without even the pretense of mental or physical exertion.