Fishing and Investing – A Wealth of Common Sense

One of the cool things about being a parent is sharing the same interests as your kids.

My kids like shooting baskets in the driveway just like I did when I was young. I’ve indoctrinated them into Michigan football and basketball fandom. They love playing cards, which encompasses some of my fondest memories growing up.

But it’s also cool to see them find their own thing and bring me along for the ride.

My girls both play soccer.

I never really played competitively growing up. I didn’t follow soccer closely. Never watched it very much. But watching them has given me a newfound love of the game.

I love watching them play.

My son plays football and basketball just like I did but his true love is fishing.

I love the outdoors but wouldn’t consider myself an outdoorsman. There is a difference. My uncles and cousins on my dad’s side of the family hunt and fish but for some reason that was never my thing.

Now that we’re on the lake all summer, George wants to go fishing every morning off the docks. He’s obsessed.

He’s also been pushing hard for a charter fishing tour on Lake Michigan. Last weekend we finally did it.

The way it works is once they get to the usual spots the captain sets the boat on an automatic course. The boat essentially idles on a path as 10-ish rods are in the water awaiting bites.

George is 8. The charter captain said that’s the best age to be a good fisherman on this type of expedition.

They told us the older people who think they know what they’re doing tend to whip the pole around from side to side or wrench it back.

When they do this the fish inevitably comes off the hook.

But the young fisherman, like my son, simply reels it in which is all you need to do. You see, since the boat is moving when the fish bite, the hook is already set. You don’t need to pull the pole all over the place to set it.

Upon hearing that the slow and steady approach beats the more showy one, my investing brain immediately went to the markets.

This is the difference between simple, successful investing and those who try too hard and end up with unsatisfactory results.

At a speech to some business school students in the 1990s, Charlie Munger told the following story:

I think the reason why we got into such idiocy in investment management is best illustrated by a story that I tell about the guy who sold fishing tackle. I asked him, ‘My God, they’re purple and green.

Do fish really take these lures?’ And he said, ‘Mister, I don’t sell to fish.’

The captain said he tells people once or twice to stop yanking the pole so much but most don’t listen and end up losing most of the fish. They go home unhappy.

The hard part is the salmon we were fishing for are at 80 to 100 feet or more of depth because that’s where the cold water is. So you have to reel in the fish for a very long time. Most people get bored and would rather pull, tug, and yank the pole around than methodically reel it in.

George reeled in 5 giant fish.

He didn’t lose one.

Here are some of the fish he caught:

He loved lifting them up after they were on the boat:

A huge salmon:

And finally here’s the haul for the half day we were out (we got a late start because of a thunderstorm but still made out pretty well):

We’ll be eating salmon for weeks (there was some trout too).

Further Reading:
The Best Investment I Ever Made

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