What is the origin of the "fishing up a boot" trope?

May 17, 2012 9:18 AM

We've all seen this trope. A man is rod fishing, when he thinks he's just made a catch, but, tarnation! It's an old boot! Only there's something about it that just strikes me as quite odd about this whole business.

Namely, this is a common trope, but an uncommon and bizarre event. What is the meaning of this? Something about it has a feeling of age, as if it was relevant a hundred years ago and only remembered vestigially for its depiction of dashed hopes. How far back does it go? Was this something that actually happened with any kind of regularity? Were people really fishing up boots at some point? Is there some property of boots that lends them to being hooked?

posted by Algebra to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

Is it really that uncommon? When I fish, I am constantly snagging things that aren't fish. Admittedly, they're not usually boots, but little picnic coolers or beer cans or whatever. Once it was a sweatshirt.

My guess is that some cartoonist or illustrator represented "the not-a-fish thing you hooked" as a boot rather than anything else because a boot is easy to draw recognizably.

Boy, doing a GIS for "fisherman catching boots" brings up a bunch of really unfunny cartoons.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:23 AM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

Best answer: It's a visual representation of not only futility, but three different kinds of specific futility. Namely, not only did you miss the thing you were trying to catch:

* A boot is worthless by itself. If you caught two boots, you'd have a pair that could be worn.
* The presence of a boot indicates that someone else has already been to this location and has possibly fished it out.
* That same previous person (or the people it represents) has polluted the fishing hole, possibly making it worthless forever.

It's the rare thing -- a comedy trifecta.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:27 AM on May 17, 2012 [25 favorites]

Individual rod fishing for food and recreation was much more common in the past. So was throwing trash in the river.

I caught a Nike high-top once. And I've seen a baseball cap caught the same way. I'm pretty sure the river I was fishing is cleaner today than it was in the late '80s, though.
posted by General Tonic at 9:32 AM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Might it be related to the misfortune not just of the boot catcher, bit also to the boot loser. I mean, how did the boot get there in the first place? Someone else was once in the water, got his or her foot stuck in the mud and ended up losing a boot. Sucks to be that person.

And also sucks to be you because you hooked not a fish, but a lost boot.
posted by etc. at 9:40 AM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I think the trope of starving to the point of cooking and eating old shoes is also relevant here.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:40 AM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

There is a lake I frequent where a sudden gust of wind blew my favorite fishing hat off my head. She (the hat) was lost to the lake that day. Every year when I return to the lake, my first morning of fishing is in the area I lost that hat with the hope I snag it. Never have and likely never will, but I could easily see having a few cold drinks and losing a boot to the lake too. But, I think Cool Papa Bell makes some great points about futility and one boot.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:41 AM on May 17, 2012

Best answer: I think General Tonic has it - today's "don't litter" mentality is very much at odds with the attitude of olden times (when this image originated). I'm guessing there were a lot more boots in rivers back then, so it wouldn't have been as uncommon to catch random trash with your fishing line.

Another thing is that a boot is a very recognizable shape, so it serves well as an icon of "random trash" whereas something like a wet old shirt might not be as immediately recognizable.

A boot might have the right weight, etc, to feel like a fish on the line (whereas with other trash you might know you've hooked a non-fish even before you see it). So it delays the reveal so the fisherman and viewer can experience frustrated realization at the same moment.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:57 AM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

I also see this trope with old tires or tin cans, which to me supports the idea that the boot is mostly standing in for random undesirable trash found in the river, and that it's not essential that it's a boot specifically. It is interesting that hooked boots seem to have pushed out tires and cans in the vocabulary of visual cliches.
posted by hattifattener at 10:20 AM on May 17, 2012

What is the origin of the "fishing up a boot" trope?

Nice explanations, but no one is answering the question.

Fishing for Sole gives a nice overview of places where this trope emerges, but no chronology.
posted by three blind mice at 10:22 AM on May 17, 2012

Best answer: three blind mice, that's the link the OP had in the OP.

My GIS didn't turn up anything datable. Here's a 19th-century cigar box label, so obviously the cliche (it's not really a "trope") has been around for a while.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:38 AM on May 17, 2012

Best answer: Perhaps this image (lower left) is even earlier than the above. So now we've got it back to 1890, when it was already a cliche.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:40 AM on May 17, 2012

Best answer: To extend what Cool Papa Bell said a bit, I'd guess it was very common practice into the 20th century for people and whole communities to dump their garbage right into lakes and streams.

It's generally down hill from wherever you are, and once it's in the water, it doesn't smell or attract as many vermin.

I tried to Google up support for this thought without much success, but here in Seattle, a fair bit of lake Washington lakeside property is a former garbage dump.
posted by jamjam at 11:49 AM on May 17, 2012

Were people really fishing up boots at some point?

Still are.

Is there some property of boots that lends them to being hooked?

Well, leather, especially after rotting in the water a while, would probably be easily hooked itself, and then you have all the other gewgaws like laces and eyelets. Combine that with a good heft to it, and an odd shape susceptible to currents, and you have something that could easily feel like a big'un to a fisherman.

While this trope is sometimes seen in the rural trash-pond milieu, I think it's just that people used to muck about in streams a lot more often and lose their boots that way.

I definitely agree the metaphor for futility had much more power in the past. If you spend hours out there fishing for dinner, you're much more disappointed than if you just spent hours out there to get away from the wife.
posted by dhartung at 12:05 AM on May 18, 2012