Morning of February 28, 2014. Friday.

My brother-in-law Bob (much younger in the dream, possibly only forty) and I are out near what first seems like the ocean, but should actually be the Black River part of the Mississippi in Wisconsin. He tells me that it is too windy to fish, but I am not concerned. I cast my line out anyway and the hook blows back into my hair a few times (but does not get entangled or injure me). Eventually I drop the line closer to shore where it is fairly rocky just under the water. There are several fish about the size of a larger bluegill. They have orange bodies with black stripes and are otherwise between a striper and a crappie (pronounced “croppy” by the way - at least where I lived). Bob calls them by a name I do not think I have heard, but cannot presently remember what the name was. It actually might have been “striper” after all, however, but I am not sure.

We end up going a bit north where the water and shore is very different. There are people all in a line along the high bank overlooking darker water and it almost seems like being inside a building. I never cared much for fishing in a public area around other people in real life; too problematic. At any rate, I notice a larger fish in the water and swing the line down near to where it is. I actually see the fish come up and take the bait in its mouth. The water is murky, yet I can see everything fairly clearly somehow.

"Pull back," says Bob, "Set the hook."

I just pull and pull and the weight is extreme. When it comes out of the water, it looks just like Monstro from the "Pinocchio" movie (Disney) and angled more upward over time. Everyone else is watching. It seems unlikely that I would be able to pull it up and out of the water (especially considering that the embankment is fairly high from the water’s surface), yet I do - and as I do, it becomes smaller and more like a large largemouth bass as I swing it around and to the other side onto the ground. For some reason, I get the impression that people think I had never caught a fish before. (Another reason I have never liked fishing in public is having an “audience” - it is not a spectator sport other than when broadcast on television I suppose.) Bob does not seem to have started fishing yet, but I still get the idea there will be more to do here. It is interesting of how my “ideal” age in many of my dreams seems to be around twenty or so.

Fishing-with-brother-in-law-Bob dreams (and fishing dreams in general, really) often have very similar moods and aspects, even since earliest memory. They often involve catching a “giant” fish, one that has a very unusual or “ugly” appearance, the water getting more shallow over time (which is obviously interpreted as growing closer to the end of the dream and waking up - as water represents the subconscious in this case), fishing at an unlikely location (such as from a high balcony or inside a business office through which there is sometimes a culvert), catching something other than a fish, having to lift the fish through the air from a higher embankment, etc. I recently posted one of the first ones known (“The Angler” - from 1965). Such dreams are somewhat like a “dream within a dream”, as I associate fishing with meditation, “letting go”, and relaxation somewhat and so the dreams are probably just another level of the same concept with a bit more imaginative distortion, and little meaning, if any (other than the particular conscious and subconscious interaction of the time).