Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

Some of my detractors have begun saying that even though I founded the  World Fishing Training Center, I was not a successful fisherman because I had never actually caught any fish.

To show them how wrong they were, I decided to write a book. There is nothing better than writing a book for establishing credibility and proving that you are an authority in your area of expertise. After all, the word “author” is in “authority.” I had spent so much money buying books about fishing, attending fishing conferences, going to Africa to fish, and founding the World Fishing Training Center that although it was true that I had never caught any fish, this did not make me any less of an expert in fishing. And a book would prove it.

I initially wanted to write a book called Red Fish, Blue Fish as a way of talking about different types of fishing by Democrats and Republicans, but my agent told me that someone had already written a book with that title. I went down to the library and read this book. It was mostly pictures, and I bet the author has never even caught a fish. Besides, I don’t know a whole lot about politics, and my agent told me to focus on my area of expertise—fishing.

So I wrote this book instead. The book that proves I am a great fisherman is the book you are now reading.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

After I started the World Fishing Training Center, I had thousands of students who came and went through the courses we offered. But I soon began receiving reports that after the students went back to their homes, few of them were actually doing any fishing. It made me question what we were doing and why. If the students we trained to fish never actually did any fishing, was there a problem with our training or was it a problem with the students.

Upon reflection, I determined that it was the student’s fault. Most of them were not truly committed fishermen. Though they seemed like true fishermen at the beginning, the fact that they fell away and never actually fished proved that they were never fishermen to begin with. They were spurious fisherman.

Somehow we needed to develop a way to determine true fisherman from false fisherman. We could not have any fishermen who put their hand to the rod, and then later turned away. We needed lifelong commitment.

So I sat down and put together a fishing covenant. It was a document which provided the seven proper beliefs and ten proper behaviors of all true fishermen. If a potential fishermen trainee could not agree to this fishing covenant, then they were rejected from our Training Center and were counseled to examine themselves to see whether or not they were into fishing.

Here is the Fishing Covenant I developed:

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

After my great success in Africa, some of my donors suggested that I start a “Training Center” for fishermen. There were numerous fishermen around the country and across the world who were dying to know all that I had learned about fishing, and how they too could become a successful fisherman.

This training center would have all the best books and equipment. It would be a safe place where fishermen could come for training. We would not only teach the fishermen trainees everything they needed to know about fishing, but would put them in real-life scenarios where they could practice the skills of fishing, without any danger of drowning, getting pierced by hooks, or getting arrested for swimming. At our school, they could become master fishermen without any contact with smelly fish.

The first thing I had to do was start an advertising campaign. I needed brochures and billboards, television spots and radio ads. And on every single one, I had to put a picture of myself.

So I had a professional photographer come over to my house. I put on my best fishing t-shirt and my golden fishing necklace, and had him take pictures of me standing in front of all my fishing books. For a special touch, he told me to open a leather-bound fishing book and point my finger at some random place on the page to make it look like I was studying it.

When I got the proofs back, I was quite impressed. With my fishing clothes on, all those fishing books behind me, and the open fishing book in my hands, I really looked like a world-class fisherman. Everybody would want to learn from me now!

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

Recently at my fishing club, we had a special presentation from a fisherman who had just come back from fishing in Africa. He said that fish there were so hungry, they would bite on anything! He went on to tell some miraculous stories about how he got special permission to fish in some tribal fishing waters, and how the biggest fish he caught was out of a little stream of water in central Ethiopia.

It got me thinking that to become a world-famous fisherman, I needed to do two things. First, I needed to actually go fish somewhere in the world. Africa would be great! Second, since I was having so much trouble catching fish here in the United States, maybe it would be easier to go to Africa where the fish were hungry and the streams weren’t so fished out. Here in America, all the fish know all the tricks of fisherman. Fish have seen and heard it all before. But if I went to Africa, I could catch boatloads of fish every day!

That afternoon, after I got home from the fishing club, I announced my plan to my wife.

“How are you going to pay for it?” she asked. That’s my wife, always putting a damper on things because of the money.

“The value of one fish is worth all the gold and silver in the world,” I responded. “What is a little expense to bring fish into the Creel?”

“That may be true,” said my wife. “But you are going to need some of that gold and silver to buy yourself a plane ticket to Africa. After all you have spent on fishing so far, we are broke.”

She had a point.

But it didn’t take long for my crushing intellect to discern a solution. After the fisherman from Africa had spoken in our fishing club on Sunday, the club leader told us that we all should consider financially supporting the work of this fisherman in Africa. We could become a “donor” and receive special “Supporter Updates” from the fisherman about where he was going and what fish he was catching.

Why couldn’t I do the same thing? Why couldn’t I raise support and send out fundraising letters? My wife may be right that we did not have the money to send me to Africa, but I knew that where God guides, God provides. He was clearly sending me to Africa, and so He would also help bring in the money to get me there.

It really was quite easy. I wrote up an impassioned letter about the poor fish in Africa, and how I was going to go over them and help clean their water, give them food, and make sure the tribal warlords didn’t bring fish to extinction. Furthermore, I was also going to help the poor and needy people of Africa. Some fishermen only give one fish to the poor so they can eat for a day; I was going to teach them to fish so they could eat for a lifetime. Springs of living water were going to appear into the dry and dusty desert of the Sahara. I also promised to bring back an expensive souvenir from Africa for anyone who gave me a donation of $100 or more.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

Along with the Fishing Prayer, another thing I learned about at the Fishing Training Conference was the importance of writing up a document called the “Strategic Help In Training People to Love Angling Now” (SHITPLAN for short).

The speaker quoted a great verse out of the Bible which said, “People perish for lack of fishing.” One of our goals as fishermen, he said, was not just to do all the fishing ourselves, but to teach others to fish as well. Then he quoted that famous proverb (which is probably from the book of Proverbs): “Give a man a fish, feed him for day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” He said that he had plaques for sale in the conference bookstore which this saying on it. They cost only $59.99. I bought two; one for my office and one for my car.

The speaker went on to say that people perish because they don’t know how to fish, and so if we teach them to fish, they will not perish. But the problem is that most people don’t want to fish or even know how to fish, and so it was up to us to take them fishing with us when we go.

I raised my hand and said that in the past, I had tried to invite people to go fishing with me, but nobody wanted to go. Of course, I didn’t mention that I hadn’t actually been fishing yet either, but the speaker didn’t need to know that.

The speaker must have liked my question, because he spent the next ten minutes answering it. He first said that people will join us if they know where we are going. He said that you can tell if you are a leader or not by looking behind you to see if anyone is following. I was sitting in the front row, and when I looked behind me, I saw the whole room of people. I was definitely a leader in the world of fishing.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

At the Fishing Training Conference, I heard one speaker say that the key to catching fish is to faithfully praying the fishing prayer. We taught a whole seminar on the history of the fishing prayer and the amazing catches of fish that some fisherman had after praying this prayer. The prayer is kind of written in an archaic style, so he even went through the prayer line by line to teach us what the words meant. As he did so, I could sense the power of this simple prayer, and made the commitment to memorize it and pray it several times a day.

Here is the Fishing Prayer:

Our Father above the water,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy rain will come, thy rivers run,
On earth as they do in heaven.
Give us this day our daily fish,
And forgive our excess limit,
As we forgive those who set the limit.
Lead us not into rough water;
Deliver us at the end of season.
Yours is the river, the ocean, and the fishing glory
Forever and ever, Amen.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

Recently at my fishing club it was announced that a Fishing Training Conference was coming to town, and everybody who wanted some intensive preparation in being a fisherman should register to attend. There were several big-name fishermen who were going to be speaking, and the fishing club leader said that he had been going to the conference for years, and benefitted from it every time. He also encouraged us to register early. If we paid at the door for the three day conference, it would cost $249 to get in, but if we registered early, the cost was only $239. That sounded like a good deal to me, so I called up and paid that very day.

On the first day of the conference I pulled up to the conference center, full of excitement and anticipation about what I was going to learn. But I immediately felt out of place. I had worn jeans and a fishing t-shirt, but most of the people going into the conference were wearing fishing waders, fishing vests, and fishing hats. A few even carried fishing poles.

On the one hand I felt ashamed that I had not dressed more appropriately, but on the other hand, I felt in awe to be hanging out with such dedicated fishermen! I could tell just by the way they dressed that this was going to be a great conference. On the second and third day of the conference I made sure to dress to the hilt in all my fishing gear. I even put a little mud on my boots to make it look like I had just come from the stream.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

Fishermen are not as smart as they once were. Over the past fifty years, fisherman have been “dumbing down.” I blame the television.

To counteract this increasing ignorance, it is critical for fisherman to learn to talk like a fisherman. True fishermen know all the big fisherman words, and can casually throw fishing lingo into any conversation. As I started attending the fishing club every week, I quickly learned how little I knew about fishing.

During the weekly fishing lectures, and in conversations with other members after the meetings, I found myself in awe at all the big fishing terms that people threw around which I did not know. There was talk about dispenfishionalist fishcatology, angler awareness, covenants of fishing, efishiency quotient, the hydrostatic union, filioquota, and numerous other terms I didn’t understand.

And it wasn’t just the lingo. There were debates about which types of hooks were approved by God, how old a person could be before they went fishing, whether or not women could fish, and whether or not fishing could be done with rubber worms. Clearly, I had much to learn.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

I wore my fishing shirt to the mall today, and as I checked out, the clerk behind the counter noticed my shirt, and said he was a fisherman too! It is amazing where you run into other fellow fishermen.

“Where do you attend a fishing club?” he asked.

I actually had never heard of a fishing club before, but didn’t want to appear stupid, so I mumbled something about how I am still looking for a good one.

“Oh! Well you should visit mine this week! We gather on Sunday mornings, and talk about all the best fishing spots and techniques. Sometimes we hear stories about great fishing trips of the past, and every once in a while, someone shares their favorite fishing technique or gives away their secret fishing hole. It would be a great way for you to fellowship with other fishermen!”

So I went. The meeting started at 10:30 AM on Sunday morning. The group met in a big, beautiful building, and when we walked in, a guy greeted us at the door and handed me a little pamphlet which explained what the group was going to do that morning.

The meeting began a little oddly, though. Someone got up and led us all in some fishing songs. I have never been much of a singer, but I did find myself tapping my toe along to a few of the songs. One of them almost brought me to tears when we sang about the suffering of a kingfisher.

After we sang, another guy got up, and he asked if there were any newcomers that day. I tried to huddle down into my seat so no one noticed me, but the guy who invited me raised his hand and pointed to me.

“We got one here!” he shouted.

“Well, stand on up, brother!” the man up front said.

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Below is an excerpt from a book I’m writing called Adventures in Fishing (for Men). The book is a satirical allegory about Christian attempts at evangelism. He who has ears to hear…

There is only one thing better than fishing, and that is watching fishing on TV. In fact, I like watching fishing on TV so much, I have temporarily stopped fishing altogether. I feel so much more successful as a fisherman when I can watch others catch the “big one” and hear their tips and tricks for how they did it. It just goes to show that if I had been the one in that boat, with the knowledge that those fisherman had, I would have been the one to catch the big fish.

So while my wife thinks that watching fishing on TV is a waste of time, I think it is highly educational. The things I am learning about fishing will make me a highly successful, world-famous fisherman someday. I figure that the more I learn on TV, the better fisherman I will become. As a result, I turn on the TV first thing every morning to watch one or two fishing shows before work, and then I come straight home and watch fishing on TV for six or seven hours every night.

My favorite fishing channel is the Trout Broadcasting Network, TBN for short. It has one fisherman after another, all day long, talking about how they almost gotten eaten by lions while fishing in Africa, the harrowing adventure they had while fishing in Communist China, and how the Taliban almost killed them when they went fishing in Iran. These TV fishermen almost never do any actual fishing on their shows, but instead share their fish tales in front of large audiences and crowds. It is very inspiring.

The fishermen on TBN are very successful. They are always surrounded with beautiful potted plants, golden furniture, crystal chandeliers, and brass statues of fish. One fisherman I saw even had a giant oil painting of a fish descending into heaven from the peak of a waterfall. I am always in awe when I watch the show. I am not sure what fishermen paradise looks like, but it must be close what they show on TV. Best of all, in all my hours of watching, I have yet to see any dangerous fishing rods or barbed hooks. There is never any water a person might drown in, and most importantly of all, these fishermen are so thoughtful of their viewing audience, they never show any stinking, rotting fish.

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