dead fish balloon 🎈🐡
for most fish, they are denser than the water in which they live. upon dying, they will immediately sink; however, gas begins to build in their carcasses, so they start to float. when i was a child, there was a train accident upstream from us. oil and chemicals poured into the river. i remember the fish bobbing, lifeless, as the current pushed them past us. tiny little dead fish balloons, hooks in their mouths, floating in the greasy water.
anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. it would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.
— ernest hemingway