In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
When the word “fishing” is heard today inradiology departments, it is often uttered as aterm of derision. Radiologists might, for example, describe a head/neck/chest/abdomen/pelvis computed tomography scan in a patient with uncertain symptoms and signs of disease as a “fishing expedition.” Despite its largely pejorative use, however, we believe that many of us could learn a lot from fishing, and that many of these insights have important implications for the continuing education of radiologists.
Fishing can take many different forms. Fisherman may stand on the shore, wade into the water, walk about on stilts, or cast or trawl from a boat. Likewise, they may catch fish by hand, spear them, gather them in a net, angle them with a rod, or retrieve them from traps. Yet not every means of laying hands on a fish counts as fishing. For example, few would use the term to refer to the harvesting of fish that have been raised on farms.
The same might be said for radiologists. Some sit in dark rooms all day, whereas others scurry back and forth between procedure suites. Some ply the trade purely through visual detection and differential diagnosis, whereas others work largely with our hands. Some are highly subspecialized, focusing on a single modality or organ system, whereas others traverse the broad swath of general practice. In each case, however, radiologists serve a purpose beyond ourselves—to protect or promote a patient’s health.
Fishing is a quite ancient activity. The remains of human ancestors who lived tens of thousands of years ago provide unequivocal evidence that they subsisted on diets that included regular servings of freshwater fish. Likewise, archaeological remains including discarded fish bones and cave paintings of various types of sea food show that fish were an important part of the life of many prehistoric peoples. The quality of fishing often determined where human settlements were constructed.
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Consider this passage from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea . He looked across the sea and knew how alone he was now. But he could see the prisms in the deep dark water and the line stretching ahead and the strange undulation of the calm. The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
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