A New Angle - Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation seeks new members

American Demographics, June 1, 2001

The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation aims to reel in more anglers. Will the lure of the simpler pleasures hook them?

For better or worse, the looming recession could prove a catalyst for relatively inexpensive leisure pursuits, such as fishing.

It evokes images of Huck Finn, of Andy and Opie ambling down to the pond, and of stoic Midwestern geezers biding their retirement in a lazily drifting boat. It is one of those sepia-hazy, dew-appointed pastimes of that "simpler America" that fewer and fewer people can remember, of a rural republic vs. a global empire. At very least, it is something your dad used to do.

Fishing seems an anachronism in this one-button Internet-access, multitasking world, where cell phones and laptops enable work's creeping encroachment into leisure hours, and where two kids in every classroom are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Who, after all, has time for such lazy, uncomplicated, Zen leisure between 70-hour work-weeks, two careers per household, and children coming of age? How does such a rustic notion strike a chord with a largely urban, techno-centric population buffeted by dog-eat-dog lifestyles accessorized by the latest, hottest, hippest? And yet, the irony of this setup is that it may provide an inarguable, self-sustaining rationale for the pitch of the new ad campaign for the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation (RBFF), in spite of the difficult waters the organization is attempting to navigate.

A nonprofit consortium of industry associations and government agencies, the RBFF raised a few eyebrows this spring with its "Water Works Wonders" campaign. Introduced on big-ticket national media, such as CBS's NCAA tournament coverage, the TV component of the campaign offers richly photographed, idyllic images of people of all sizes and colors idling in each other's heartfelt company. Different voices, young and old, bid, "Take me fishing ...and make me feel 16 again," or "...because my wedding will be sooner than you think."

At first blush, it is an evocative, heart-massaging campaign, its peaceful images and lyrical copy a welcome oasis on cluttered adscape of noisy product pitches. This is not mere happenstance. The RBFF, which did not respond to interview requests, took up its charge three years ago with an exhaustive battery of research into why people fish and why they don't do so more often. The number of active anglers decreased from 35.6 million people aged 16 and older, to 35.2 million between 1991 and 1996, according to the Department of the Interior. While not a precipitous decline, it is ominous when compared with a 20 percent growth in the angling population through the 1980s.

In its own series of regional telephone surveys conducted by Responsive Management, a research firm based in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the foundation discovered that 55 percent of past anglers cited time constraints as the reason they had curtailed fishing. Of those, 69 percent cited work obligations as the locus of their time constraints. So at least among those who'd fished before, the point of disconnect almost informs the lure of angling. That is, amid our hectic schedules, we are primed for a much-needed respite, if only we can find the time and impetus.

Further research supported the notion of fishing as disconnection with our vocational lives in favor of reconnection with the private. According to Responsive Management's data and a 1980 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study, 35 percent of anglers in 1999 cited relaxation as their reason for fishing, vs. 14 percent in 1980. Thirty-three percent cited "being with family and friends" in 1999, vs. 19 percent in 1980. Meanwhile, the traditional sporting or utilitarian purposes for angling declined proportionally. Only 7 percent of anglers cited sporting as their reason for fishing in 1999, vs. 20 percent in 1980, while those who angled to catch fresh fish declined from 28 percent in 1980, to 5 percent in 1999.

And so we see some social validation of the comic stereotype of the fisherman dropping his line to crack a beer, jaw with buddies, or simply, in the Buddhist interpretation, push off from cognitive business. As a result, receptive ears might well be fielding the pitch.

"One of the most common tensions of our time is the contrast between living in this upgradeable society, where everything is faster and faster, and a sense of, as I've called it, 'Stop-the-World-I-Want-to-Get-Off,'" says Myra Stark, senior vice president and director of knowledge management at Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.

Stark sees fishing as a pastime that can easily fall under the aegis of a broader middle-class trend toward a more deliberate, simpler existence. Witting or unwitting apostles of Thoreau, these citizens have come to re-examine their lifestyles from three separate, yet often interconnected, paths: spirituality, nostalgia, and voluntary simplicity. Spirituality has cropped up less as a religion-specific phenomenon and more as a yearning for touchstones outside the mundane; a "spiritual individualism," Stark says, "a little bit of yoga, a little bit of religion, a little bit of communing with nature." Nostalgia's psychological engine is, as Stark defines it, "yearning for a simpler, better time." Both notions weave in with what is perhaps a more distinctive social/consumption wave called "voluntary simplicity."