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Fishing. Yes, you read that right - fishing. As some of you know, I like and don't like fish. This ambiguity has been passed down to my children and clouded my wife's perspective as well.

Several time over the past few years I have considered taking up fishing. Why you ask? Good question. Clearly not for sustenance, I have plenty of other hobbies and I wasn't looking for an excuse to buy a boat or one of those vests that could hide a Beanie Baby collection. But the idea of hanging out at the edge of the ocean and interacting with its vertebrate and invertebrate inhabitants was drawing me like a moth to a bug zapper.

The tipping point came this spring break. The kids were coming home but not for the full time and we didn't have spring break vacation plans. What woooouuuuld we do? I know! Let's go fishing! I was on it. First - hardware.

Fishing poles. I could write pages on my collection of information, search and ultimate procurement but I will spare you. You know when you are planning a family vacation, you have all those choices to make? As it turns out, picking a fishing rod is like picking the season of your vacation. You have barley scratched the surface.

I settled on 2 Diwa D-Wave spinning combos. You're impressed, right? Guess what? They don't even come with hooks. You can't expect to drop a naked line in the water and expect the fish to clinch his teeth around the sting while your reel him in can you? Lets get some hooks. Do you have any idea how many different hooks there are? Consider the Beanie Baby collection - not even close . . . "Hey Bubba, you lookin to buy some hooks? What kinda leaders you got?" Leaders? State or local?. And so it went, leaders, jigs, split-shot, bobbers, swivels, Carolina rigs, Texas rigs, super secret double probation rigs.

Bait - that's all I gonna say about that.

. . . to be continued . . .