Yesterday I went fishing for wild steelhead on the Deschutes River up in Maupin, Oregon. It’s a beautiful spot, and I was sure I’d return with a whole mess of fishies. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The mistake I think I made was choosing to bring a gun instead of a fishing pole. The gun was a Nighthawk Custom 10-8 combat pistol, and while it’s a great option for the military or police, it’s a decidedly terrible choice when it comes to recreational fishing.

In hindsight, this probably should have been obvious to me, as all my previous attempts to shoot fish out of the water have been a failure. Even so, I am stubborn, and I suppose I thought this time might be different. It wasn’t. I spent hours silently trolling the river looking for the perfect fishing spot, gauging wind and water temperature, attempting to use my fishermen’s sixth sense to determine where the steelhead might be lurking. Finally I found the spot, a little eddy on the north side of Mount Thielsen. There I found a huge school of hungry fish just waiting to be caught. Well, let me tell you something: as soon as I opened fire on those fuckers, they swam away, never to be seen again. All that work for nothing.

Fucking fish.

Some experienced fishermen might think my efforts to shoot fish with a handgun are misguided. Well those fishermen can suck my dick. Just because something hasn’t worked in the past doesn’t mean it can’t work now. The Nighthawk is a terrific pistol specifically designed for close quarter combat. What could be closer combat than fishing? In retrospect, I don’t think the mistake I made was bringing the gun; it was not bringing enough ammo. I unloaded all nine clips into the river within about a minute. This required some very fast shooting on my part! The law of average states that if I fire enough bullets, eventually one of them is going to hit a fish. The problem: not enough bullets.

(My fishing pole)

Also, shooting a gun is a lot more fun than sitting in a boat with some string attached to a pole. I know a lot of guys who have fished in the traditional way all day and came back with exactly as many fish as I did: zero. The difference? I had a blast (pun intended), and they just sat out there “in nature.” If I wanted to hang out in nature, I would do it from the comfort of my living room.

The other advantage of using a gun for fishing is that you don’t have to dig up worms, which are scary. Fishermen may tell you that they enjoy hooking their lines with grubs and night crawlers, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: worms are really creepy even to fishermen. They just act like they’re not because they don’t want to be called pussies. But no matter what anybody says, in their heart of hearts, even hardened fishermen know that all bugs are creepy and scary. They just won’t admit it.

So it was a bad day on the Deschutes. I ran out of bullets and I didn’t shoot any fish, but I did accidentally wing a hiker, which normally would be a terrible tragedy but he went down so fast I don’t think he had any idea what hit him, and I got the hell out of there before anybody saw what happened, so I think I’m in the clear.