What could be more zen than fishing? Fishing without bait or hook. What could be more zen than that? Fishing in Minecraft.

I could spend hours staring at my phone screen, dangling a fishing pole made out of ones and zeroes over a body of blue electrons.

Benefits of Virtual Fishing

• No stink
• You don’t have to clean what you catch
• You don’t have to touch anything squirmy or slimy
• You don’t kill anything
• If you have to pee, you pause the game and go to your indoor outhouse
• If you get hungry or thirsty, you pause the game and go eat/drink
• No bugs
• No snakes
• No bears
• No camping

Drawbacks of Virtual Fishing

• No delicious fresh fish [but no killing, touching, gutting, or washing up after]

So, pretty much a total win.

Unlike Real Life, I adore my Minecraft fishing camp. I built it on a spit of sand not far from my tiny house. I live on an island that makes Gilligan’s Island look like Manhattan, but why waste time trotting back and forth? So I built this camp. In Real Life, I always considered a fishing camp to be a little slice of hell. (See Drawbacks, above)

The posts are three fence sections stacked on top of one another (a single fence section turns into a post, in case you don’t know). I topped them with wooden slabs, extended to the edges of the spit for protection from the rain, so I can fish during downpours. There’s a jack-o-lantern on top (pumpkin + torch = jack-o-lantern) for light. There’s a bed so I can sleep away the night if the moon isn’t full enough to fish by.

Guess where you get a fishing pole. Never mind, you’ll never guess. The rod is made of three sticks, oddly enough. In this game, you would think you made the rod out of, I don’t know, eggs or pig’s tails or something. The string — and this is par for the course for this game — is made out of cobweb. You find an abandoned mine, clip a cobweb with the shears you use to shear sheep, and the cobweb turns into string. I know, right?

And what have I caught? You can catch fish, trash, or treasure. I’ve caught four kinds of fish: salmon, puffer fish, clown fish, and “fish”. A bowl. A stick. A bottle of water. A piece of leather (WIN! I can make paper out of sugar cane and paper + leather = book!). A saddle (currently trash because it’s useless in the version I can play on my phone, but possibly treasure in the future because, in the regular game, you can use the saddle to ride a pig. Yes, I said pig. I know, right?). A bone, which I can use to tame a wolf into a dog — I could have a puppy!!! An enchanted book(!!!). I can use the enchanted book to enchant my fishing rod so it attracts more treasure! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaa!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m goin’ fishin’.

Oh, I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies about The Queen of Foods, Fried Green Tomatoes.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Does your main character now, or has your main character ever, enjoyed going fishing?

MA