Why People Fish...

Part 2

This is how this year's fishing variable interval reinforcement schedule played out:

Again, beautiful fall weather, good tide and positive fishing reports were on our side. At our first fishing destination, the water was clear enough to see bait fish following our lures. (Reinforcement of a kind – if bait fish were interested in our lures, surely their larger predators would be as well, no?) After a few casts I caught the smallest bluefish I'd ever seen, all of about three inches. Like a rat getting a single small pellet of food for a lever press...

(For those of you out there that care about such things, we were fishing for bluefish of any size. Bluefish can reach 40 pounds, though under 20 is more common. Smaller, seven to ten inch bluefish are called snappers and are fun to catch and make great eating. They are also the fish I was wildly successful at catching through my teen and college years, much to the chagrin of my brother whom I'd regularly outfish.)

I moved to another part of the pier we were fishing from and hit a hot spot – sort of. I would feel a sharp tug on the line, then nothing. Again, another tug, and nothing. Finally, the rod bent, and I knew I had a big one, which I played until it reached the surface, where I could see the 18-20 inch bluefish skillfully throw the hook and swim away. Like a rat almost getting a substantial reward of food for a lever press. I kept casting.

Another hit, another large blue, not quite as big as the first one, but equally skilled in throwing the hook when I got it to the surface, allowing me to see, again, the size of the one that got away. (Yeah, I know...it sounds like a classic fish story...) More casts, more tugs, at variable intervals, but no more visual appearances. I kept casting.

Meanwhile, my fellow rats fishermen were not seeing quite the action I was, but still kept fishing, experiencing a sort of vicarious variable interval reinforcement from my partial success. We then traveled to another fishing area several miles away where other fishermen had buckets of kingfish they had been rewarded with on their own variable interval schedule. This time my husband hooked and landed a snapper-sized blue, providing my brother and I with the vicarious reinforcement which kept us fishing the surrounding area with no success.

We moved to a third fishing area, one, again, with lots of interested bait fish, some big enough to actually hook and land (more small food pellet reinforcement for lever pressing). It was here I got my own official snapper-sized blue, nostalgically bringing back memories of outfishing my brother. We called it a day shortly thereafter (Lacking that genetic disposition, my husband's fishing stamina was waning.) and we went out for dinner.

At the end of dinner, my brother, who had had up until that point the least successful day of fishing of the three of us, announced he might go to the ocean side of the island and make a few casts before heading home. (It was already dark and he had a four hour trip ahead of him.) As tempting as it was to join him, I played the good wife, said goodbye to my brother, and went back to the hotel with my fished-out husband. Emails from my brother the next day contained a photo of the striped bass he caught in the dark and the tale of a much larger striper that snapped the line and got away with one of my brother's favorite lures.
 

Why do people fish?

Variable interval reinforcement...

Will we be back next year? Oh, yeah...

Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught. - Author Unknown