We did a double-take after shuffling through the New York Times sports section on Tuesday morning on the morning commute to Manhattan. The Times has a very Orvisy take on fishing journalism, but a piece on a new angling development in Korea had a decidely different feel.
It seems South Koreans have developed a substitute for stopping at the pub on the way on home. Instead of happy hour at the bar, some folks are stopping by an indoor fishing establishment to wet a line and chase carp for an hour or two.
For about $8 an hour, you get a pole, some dogfood-like bait with a float, and a chance at an indoor “pond” stocked with carp and a few catfish.
As the paper’s James Card put it: “If ‘Blade Runner’ were turned into a fishing program, this would be the filming location.”
The Koreans call the allure of a fish on the line “seon maht,” or “hand taste” in a rough translation.
The story triggered uneasy memories of the blue plastic pool stocked with “trout” at the annual fishing expo in Suffern, which, thankfully, was done away with a few years back (in favor of a tank of bass that are “caught” as part of demonstrations for … well, something.
I’ve been wondering if there were one of these in Midtown somewhere, whether I’d fork over $8 on my way home from work. “Probably,” is all I’ve come up with. But that’s a hypothetical situation, and as Kenneth on “30 Rock” sees it, “That’s like lying to your brain.”
