Summertime
And the livin? is easy
Fish are jumpin?
And da cotton is high
(from Gershwin?s immortal ?Porgy and Bess?)

It?s the jumping fish that got me. Well, all fish for that matter. I just got It. I mean, I Got IT.

I got why men go fishing.

It?s the zen of it. The yoga feel. Ask any guy, and he will tell you I?m nuts. You see, ?yoga? sounds so feminine. So New World-ish. No Real Guy would do anything less than Real Guy Stuff.

But fishing is truly a branch of yoga.

Only for the past century or so have men come to learn what women and yogis have known from the beginning of time: the human mind needs to step out of itself to discover itself.

Take President Herbert Hoover. What did he do to get away from it all? Fish!

?There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.?

He was right.

George Bush too. ?I don't want to sit at the head table anymore. I want to go fishing.?

Even the great baseball coach Whitey Herzog would rather go fishing: ?The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I'd rather go fishing for three years.?

Fishing really may be a kind of religion. It certainly was for the minister and two sons in Robert Redford?s captivating movie, ?A River Runs through It.? Although Norman, the elder son and the narrator, accepted the fishing thing with a quiet sense of destiny, it was clearly fishing that defined each of the three men: "[Father] told us about Christ's disciples being fisherman, and we were left to assume...that all great fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fisherman and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman."

I get it. As I sit here by a luxurious pool in one of the most beautiful areas in the country, I understand why my friend Ken longs to pick up his fishing pole and head off. Truthfully, I wouldn?t mind joining him.

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