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Fishing too high-tech

I was sort of saddened by Bill Graves’ article on fish-finders. I never even read the whole thing.

I can imagine the “outdoorsman” of the future. He decides to go fishing. He reaches for his laptop and, with the latest search engine, picks out a lake. With that information, the “outdoorsman” summons his drone “sportsplane,” and that, guided by both inertial and satellite information, flies up to the lake and scans the lake with the latest fishfinder.

Processing that information, the “outdoorsman” finds a fish to his liking and commands the drone to release the killer submarine. The submarine searches out the target fish and scans its actions and determines what the target fish is feeding on. It then releases a tethered copy of the bait, complete with treble hooks, and, of course, catches the fish. The submarine retrieves the fish, takes it into the hold, then comes to the surface where it is picked up by the drone.

The drone speeds on its way to Haiti, measures the fish and sends the data to the Department of Records. At Haiti, the big fish is carefully handled and prepared for mounting, and a large fillet is sent back to the “outdoorsman,” charging the whole thing on his VISA card. He microwaves the fillet in a special wine sauce and has it for supper. Three weeks later he receives his mounted fish complete with certified statistics and hangs it up in his den, near his other trophies.

Is this the “outdoorsman” of the future? Probably not this extreme, at lease for the next few years, but we certainly are headed this way. Is the real outdoors so boring that we need pixels to liven up the action?

I think I’ll try and round up some kids and we’ll go looking for salamanders and listening for wood frogs. Our only hi-tech equipment will be flashlights and rubber boots.

Frederick Gralenski

Pembroke