Failed to Set the Hook

I despise fishing. Have never liked it. As a child I saw a short film about fishing that completely shaped and encapsulated perfectly my views of fishing.

A man is walking along the edge of a lake, just meandering along. He looks down and see a candy bar on the ground. He picks it up, examines it, and deciding that nothing is wrong with it, he tears it open and takes a bite.

He chews for a bit, then he starts to gag. As he begins to gag the end of a hook appears in the side of his cheek and fishing wire dangles from his mouth. He drops the candy bar and begins to try and free himself from the hook, but the fishing line goes taut and begins to pull him towards the lake.

He struggles and struggles but is eventually pulled down into the lake, under the water, by the fishing line. A few seconds pass, we see the man's last few bubbles of life flit away, the water's surface calms, then up from out of the lake, another candy bar is thrown onto the ground. That little scene has stayed with me for years.

Despite my hatred for fishing, I do see the need to use fishing terms and analogies from time to time. My last; A nibble, from a few posts ago. Now, Failed to set the hook.

The agent who asked for my first ten pages has decided not to ask for the rest of the manuscript. Crushing defeat. BUT, I look on the bright side and realize, I just re-read my book and found errors that I otherwise would not have found . . . so (like Bill Murray says in Caddy Shack when he is talks about how he got eternal life as a tip for his caddying for the Dali Lama) I got that going for me.