Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. I’m Conner from polyglossa.com, and you’re listening to Episode 34 of the Listening Time podcast.

If this is your first time here, welcome! I’m glad you found this resource that will help you practice your English listening skills. So, in each episode of this podcast, I choose a different topic or a couple different topics to talk about, and I talk about these topics naturally. I don’t read a script. I’m just speaking as the words come to my mind, and I use normal words and expressions, but I speak a little bit more slowly and a little bit more clearly than other native speakers do so that you can understand me better and learn new words more easily. And in this way, you’ll eventually understand me really well, and hopefully you’ll be able to switch to real podcasts made for English speakers.

So, I hope you’re all doing well today. As you can hear from my voice, I’m recording this very early in the morning. I’ve been very, very busy recently because I’m actually going to be moving in a couple weeks. I’m going to be moving to a different city. So, I have a lot of things that I need to take care of. We have to sell a lot of items and furniture, and we have to look for an apartment, and we have to do a lot of things in preparation for this move. So, I’ve been very busy recently. And so it’s hard to find time to record these episodes, but I can always wake up early, and record them early in the morning. So, that’s what I’m doing today.

So, in today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about fishing. So, this is an interesting topic. Some of you might like fishing, and I’m sure a lot of you have never been fishing. So, this will be a new topic for some of you. And of course, remember that you have access to the transcript for this episode in the Episode Notes, so you can access it there. And remember to sign up for our one dollar Listening Practice Seminars at polyglossa.com and of course, share this podcast with anyone who might find it useful, and help this podcast grow. Alright, Let’s get started.

Okay, so let’s talk about fishing. So, fishing is an interesting sport because it involves nature. It doesn’t involve a ball, and it doesn’t involve a lot of exercise or cardio. It’s a sport that involves nature. It involves you, an animal, and the outdoors. So, I think this sport is very unique. There are different types of fishing. For example, there is freshwater fishing. The word “freshwater” just refers to water that isn’t salty, right. In the ocean, we have saltwater and in lakes and rivers and places like that, we have freshwater. So, there is freshwater fishing that you do on a lake or you do at a river or something like that. That’s one type of fishing.

And then there’s also fly fishing. This is a specific type of fishing, that involves a different type of fishing pole. The phrase “fishing pole” refers to the thing that you use to catch fish, right, this long stick. We call this a “fishing pole”. So, fly fishing involves a different type of fishing pole, and it is done usually at rivers and places like that, and it involves a different technique where you simulate a fly flying above the river, and then the fish want to eat this fly once it touches the water. So, that’s a different kind of fishing. And then there’s also saltwater fishing. So, “salt water” refers to ocean water, right, or water in the sea, water that has salt in it. It’s the opposite of fresh water.

So, you could go saltwater fishing on the coast, and for example, on a pier. I’ve done a lot of fishing on piers. The word “pier” refers to this wooden structure that extends from the shore out into the water. By the way, the word “shore” refers to the part where the land meets the ocean or the sea. This is the shore. So, a pier is a wooden structure that goes from the shore out into the water, and you can stand on it, and you can look down at the water, you can fish, and you can just walk on this pier. There are many piers in the US at beaches or just on the coast in general. So, I fished a lot on piers when I was younger. You can also fish at the beach, right. Some people take their fishing pole to the beach and fish there.

And one other type of saltwater fishing is deep sea fishing. This is where you go out on a boat, and you go into the ocean, and you fish off of shore, right. You fish in the ocean, and you catch much bigger fish, usually, right, because these are fish that live in the deep part of the ocean. These are usually bigger than fish that you catch in lakes and in rivers. So, those are some different types of fishing.

Now, let’s talk about the goal of fishing. What is the point of fishing. Well, the point of fishing is to entice a fish. The word “entice” means to to make someone, or an animal, interested to attract them or interest them. So, you want to entice a fish. And you usually do this by tricking them. So, “to trick” someone or to trick an animal means that you deceive them. You kind of lie to them, right. You make them think that something is true, but it’s not. So in the case of fishing, you trick the fish by making them want to bite and eat your bait or lure. The word “bait” refers to the food that you put on the end of your hook to try to attract the fish. So, the word “hook” refers to this sharp, pointy thing that the fish bites when you’re fishing.

I know this is a lot of new vocabulary. I’m sorry for that, but it’s also good for you to learn all these words. So, you put bait on the end of your hook so that the fish will bite it. Or, I also use the word “lure”. A lure is similar to bait, but it’s not actual food, right. It’s just some kind of fake fish or fly or something like that, that you use to trick the fish, and you make the fish think that it’s food. And so, people use either bait or they use a lure to try to trick fish into biting this bait or lure, because the fish thinks that it’s food. And it doesn’t know that there’s a hook on it. So, they don’t realize that when they bite this bait or this lure, they’re going to get trapped. Right. The hook is going to sink into its mouth, and it will be trapped. So the phrasal verb “sink into” just means that something goes deep into something else. So, the hook sinks into their mouth. It traps them by hooking their mouth, right.

So, when you fish, you want to entice the fish with a lure or with bait, and then when they bite this, you want to reel in the fish. The phrasal verb “reel in” means when you bring the fish closer to your fishing pole by reeling. The verb “to reel” is the verb that we use to talk about the action where you’re bringing the fish in, you’re turning that thing on your pole to draw in the line, and it brings in the fish, right. The fishing line is this thin little thing that is like string, almost, but it’s much much stronger. It can handle the weight of the fish.

So, that was a lot of vocabulary. Don’t worry if it was a lot of new stuff for you, because this is a very technical topic, right. We don’t always talk about fishing in our everyday lives. So, I’m sure a lot of this vocabulary is completely new for you. That’s okay. So, you reel in the fish, right, you bring it in. This can be difficult because the fish fights back, right. The fish doesn’t want to be reeled in. The fish wants to escape. So usually, this involves some energy and strength on your part. You have to battle the fish and bring him in. If you’re fishing at a lake, for example, and it’s a small fish, this isn’t that hard. You don’t have to make that much effort.

But for example, if you’re deep sea fishing, and you have a really big fish on the end of your line, this can take hours, even. Some people battle with a giant fish for hours before they can finally bring the fish into the boat. So, it could be a very long struggle. The word “struggle” just refers to some type of fight or battle in this context. So, it could be a long struggle: you against the fish, or it could be a very quick action. You just reel the fish in, and then you have it. And then lastly, when you have the fish, and it’s actually in the boat, or you have it on dry land, you’ve brought the fish all the way to shore, at that point, you can choose to either release the fish, to put it back in the water, or maybe you can take it home and cook it and eat it. So, it just depends on what your purpose is. Some people just want to fish for fun, and they just want to catch some fish and release them, or other people actually might want to fish and catch their dinner, right. So, this depends on your purpose. So, that’s kind of the process of fishing and the goal of fishing.

So, there are different techniques that we use to catch different types of fish, right. We definitely can’t use the same techniques for all the different types of fish in different types of environments. It’s very different depending on what you’re trying to catch. For example, one of the most common fish that you catch in lakes is bass. So, to catch a bass, you usually use some type of lure, right, some type of plastic or rubber figure that looks like an animal. It looks like a small fish, or it looks like a worm, right. A “worm” is this little animal, this little insect, our bug, that lives in the dirt, right, it lives underground, and when it rains, you often see these little worms, these little creatures, appear on the surface of the ground. They look like very small snakes, right. These are worms. So, sometimes a lure can look like a worm, or sometimes it can look like a fly, or it can look like a different number of small creatures.

So, to catch a bass, usually you have a lure and you reel in the lure, right. You make it move and come closer to you. And this movement attracts the bass, and the bass swims up to the lure and bites it, right, because it wants to eat it. So, this is how we might catch a bass. But, for example, if we’re fishing for catfish, we use a completely different technique. We would use bait… usually something really really smelly, something that smells really bad. And we would let this bead sink to the bottom of the lake. The verb “sink” refers to the action when something falls underwater. So, for example, the Titanic sank. “Sank” is the past tense of “sink”, right. So, a boat can sink, or you can allow your bait to sink to the bottom of the lake. And then, the catfish that live on the bottom of this lake will smell this bait, and they’ll swim up to it and bite it, and then you can reel in your catfish.

And then, for example, when you go fly fishing, it’s a completely different technique, because you have to simulate the movement of a fly flying above a river, or some other body of water, and you make the fish think that there’s a fly flying over the water, and then when it lands on the surface of the water, the fish swim up to it and bite it. So, as you can see, there are many different techniques to catch different types of fish.

So, how about my experience fishing? Well, nowadays, I don’t fish anymore. I hope I can take up fishing again in the future. We use the phrasal verb “take up” to say that we’re going to start a hobby, we’re going start some type of activity, like fishing or golf or whatever. So, I hope I can take up fishing again in the future. But when I was younger, when I was about 12 or 13, I was obsessed with fishing. I was a fishing fanatic.

I remember that during the summer of 2006, I think, or maybe it was 2005… I don’t remember, but during one summer, I went fishing all the time. I went fishing like multiple times every week, so I was definitely obsessed with fishing. I went to many different lakes, and I went to different piers to do some saltwater fishing, and I even went deep sea fishing once.

So, I’ve had many great experiences fishing. I remember spending hours at the lake and packing a lunch and eating my lunch at the lake and just fishing for hours and catching many fish sometimes, and other times not catching any fish. But regardless of whether or not I caught fish, it was always a fun experience. In English, when we use the phrase “whether or not”, we’re just saying yes or no. So, for example, in this case I said “whether or not I caught fish”. This means if I caught fish, or if I didn’t catch fish.

So, regardless of whether or not I caught fish, it was always a fun experience. And the reason why it’s so fun for me is that you get to spend time in nature. You get to spend time on the water, for example, if you’re in a boat, or even if you’re just on the shore, it’s a really fun experience to be by the water, and just to be in silence, maybe, just listening to the animals around you… the birds, the insects, and just spending some time outdoors. I really love this. Fishing is a very popular American pastime. So, the word “pastime” just refers to a hobby or some kind of activity that you do for fun. So, fishing is definitely a traditional pastime in the US. You might’ve seen this in movies or in TV shows before. It used to be very common for fathers to take their sons out to a lake or someplace like that to go fishing.

Nowadays, I think it’s a little less common, but I think that many people still do this, especially in more rural places. I definitely hope that I can do this with my kids in the future. I want to take them on fishing trips and spend some time just out in nature, away from the city, and I’m sure it will be fun for them to have this experience, especially when they catch their first fish. I remember when I caught my first fish. It was so cool. I was so surprised. I couldn’t believe it, but it’s definitely an experience that I’ll always remember. So, I hope to be able to give my kids that type of experience as well.

Alright, I’ll stop there for today. Hopefully this episode was interesting for you. I’m sure you learned a lot of new vocabulary. That’s good. And of course, you can access the transcript for this episode in the Episode Notes. The transcript should help you learn all those new vocabulary words. So, make sure to access that. And of course, sign up for our one dollar Listening Practice Seminars at polyglossa.com and make sure to share this podcast with anyone who might find it useful so you can help other people, and also help this podcast grow. Alright, well, thank you for listening to this episode and I hope you’ll come back for Episode 35 of the Listening Time podcast.