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OK fair enough. I wasn't trying to imply that it's some sort of hardcore athletic championship. Just that it's... something! It involves using your body in the real world, using muscles and physical skill. It's "touching grass" as the kids these days say. It's something non-digital. Plus all the other stuff I said about it being happy, natural, expensive, etc.
If women only want guys who have won a major athletics tournament than we are truly doomed as a species.
To be fair, as I think of it more, I think you have the right of it. If you graphed generalized Five Domain fitness against fishing trips-per-year, age adjusted I would bet that fishing would have a positive correlation with fitness up to median, but a weak correlation above median. I was committing the sin of failing to consider the vast number of people too sedentary to fish.
The point I'm getting at is always less about the real implication than the social implication. These are social games.
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This is the first I've heard of Fishing Picture discourse, but I will say that a (not very strenuous) hiking picture seems like it would be much better. Hiking suggests trees, mountains, nature, touching grass, and is way more girlfriend friendly. You can go on a little hiking picnic together! She will definitely not be expected to help gutting fish. She will not be asked to have an opinion on the size of their fish. There's no thought of "I wish I had rubber boots and overalls for this activity, but not enough to actually buy them, so I guess my shoes will just smell like fish now." Just overall better. If the guy isn't going to invite her fishing, then it's just as bad -- he can be expected to spend a lot of weekends with his fishing buddies instead of with her.
FWIW, I have been fishing. The one time I caught some fish was a salmon run. Then someone had to teach me how to clean the fish, I froze it, and had to keep coming up with meals that could use poorly filleted salmon for several months until I had eaten said fish. It was... fine. It was almost free salmon. But there was really no opportunity at all for it to be romantic.
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Don't give up so easily, we just have to come up with approximately 4 billion athletic competitions, and split the prizes.
Once I set a challenge at my gym for everyone to build a "personal pentathlon." That is, pick 5 exercises/events that you think the lowest percentage of people could beat you at all 5. No matter how unusual the exercises or strange the combination, what can you do that no one else could do better all at once?
I'm no hero when it comes down to it, but I don't think 1% of the population could beat me at all five of: Moonboard climbing max V3-4 climbs in 30 minutes, 5min kettlebell snatch test @28kg, max muscle ups in 10 minutes, 1rm power clean and push jerk, 2k row for time. I'm not even good by hobbyist standards at some of those choices, but I'm good enough to pip most people. The guys who can out climb better than me rarely jerk more, the guys who jerk more rarely climb.
So that's one method.
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