However, by doing things that are right for you and your target trout, it becomes more likely he will someday be swimming by your side.

The truth is, you never know where you might successfully hook a trouser trout. In the course of my long and varied angling career, I’ve snagged trouser trout while standing in line at the post office, using the office photocopier, and riding public transportation. Some trouser trout will strike if you exhibit the slightest interest in them, so anglers, be alert at all times.

Of course, you also run the risk of finding Other Fish in the Sea in any quality stream. Blowfish, those egotistical farts, and trash fish seem to be especially populous and show up everywhere.

A fellow who seems to be a trout generally won’t show his Other Fish tendencies until you’ve been around him for a while and he’s no longer on his best behavior. So, quality streams don’t guarantee you’ll net a trout, but your chances are much better than in the stock-and-pull streams.

John Merwin, The New American Trout Fishing

In the dance of angler and trout, do what you like and the fish will follow. Trout fishing has its blue-ribbon waters, rivers like the Blackfoot, the Madison, the San Juan, and the Battenkill. In trouser trout angling, quality streams are the good places to meet men, some of which may have been recommended by your mother.

If you like to dance, go to dances or dance lessons. There are plenty of other dance opportunities besides the “singles” variety. You’ll find all sorts of different trout populating swing dances, country western clubs, folk dances, contra dances, tango soirees, square dances and more. You’re likely to find athletic rainbow trout, graylings and perhaps a few golden trout in these streams.

If you like to camp or hike but don’t have buddies to go with, join the Sierra Club or other outdoor groups – some are remarkable trout markets. Many universities and colleges offer low-cost extension classes that combine learning with a great outdoor experience. Some even organize trips just for fun. The outdoorsy rainbow, some brown trout, whitefish, and salmon are likely candidates here.

If you like popular science, check out the local astronomy club. Star parties provide a great excuse to get close to a man in the dark (“Ooh, let me look in that telescope!”). Computer user group meetings bring all sorts of smart folks together.

Archeology, zoology, biology, all the scientific fields hold opportunities for learning and meeting a good catch. The intellectual whitefish and the nice guy lake trout are likely lurking in these streams.

If you’ve got a spiritual nature, attend a church, synagogue, mosque, or whatever suits your religious leaning. You could hook a trout for a match made in heaven with a salmon, lake trout, or cutthroat.

At the very least, you’ll get a break from your busy schedule to relax and gain some valuable perspective reflecting on life. An attitude of gratitude can really lift your spirits, and may clarify your vision.

Go out and learn something! Learn to play guitar in a group, take art or history lessons, sharpen your business skills, or perhaps indulge in a wine appreciation class.

In addition to learning something new, you may also experience personal growth and insights, a nice by-product of taking a class. You’ll find whitefish galore, and many other types of trout, depending on the kind of class you take.

Join a club or volunteer with any kind of organization that brings people of common interests together. There are clubs and organizations devoted to just about any activity you’d care to name, and coed groups are good for meeting all kinds of trout.

Professional organizations are rich with brown trout, sea trout and whitefish, even golden trout. Parents Without Partners can be loaded with brookies. The YMCA or health clubs are a good source for rainbows or any type of trout concerned about staying in shape.

Don’t overlook the connections that friends and co-workers can provide. Your friends won’t deliberately steer you wrong, if they are indeed true friends. And your co-workers have no reason to hook you up with an Other Fish in the Sea, unless you’ve been a jerk on the job.

By going to places to do things you like to do, you’re likely find a similarly inclined trout. Bingo! You can hook up because you have something in common. In doing whatever we enjoy, we find others who enjoy it too. Chances are you’d probably enjoy doing whatever it is together.

What was wrong with the picture in the previous post?

In fishing terms, the anglers at the dance are going for quantity over quality under time pressure, and it does not make for a fun fishing trip. The point of this singles dance is to MEET MEN (or, on the other side of the gender fence, meet women), as many as you can in the few hours of the event.

“How many can I catch?” “Will they be lunkers or losers?” “How will I know since I can hardly hear what they’re saying because the music is so loud?” These thoughts put great pressure on everyone involved.

While the new phenomenon of speed dating combines quantity, speed and time limits, the format eliminates the rejection fear factor. At a dance, if he’s interested and you’re not, extrication can be awkward.

Many singles dances have more emphasis on “single” rather than “dancing,” making what could otherwise be a fun evening into a joyless campaign to connect with someone you might possibly be interested in, but probably not. There are better ways to land a lunker.

Some of us are city gals, while others prefer the country. But whether you navigate concrete canyons or wide-open spaces, there are plenty of trouser trout waiting to make your acquaintance. The places one fishes are as important as the trout you’re after. The trick is to fish the right streams when the trout are biting.

Trouser trout angling is always in season. Although you can go fishing any time of year, it’s especially compelling during the lusty month of May. When warm springtime weather gets the insects flying and the hormones circulating, all types of anglers head for the streams, which can be in the park, the gym, the library, a local café, and other places.

Continuing through the seasons, so many personal ads favor beach walks, we must use summer romances to reactivate our primeval connection to the ocean. The crisp days and nights of autumn call us out to frolic in the woods and snuggle up to someone warm. Winter conjures up images of cozy fireside chats with a charming lunker and a bottle of wine.

But where do we go to find these trout? Fishing texts are loaded with diagrams of streams, mapping rocks “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D,” indicating where a trout would most likely abide. If only trouser trout fishing spots were as easy to diagram in real life!

In fact, the noble trouser trout abides in hidden places that are right in front of our noses. Here are some guidelines to point you toward the noble trouser trout and help you to avoid those Other Fish in the Sea.

The energy in the room was driven by desperate men and women who circulated with their mothers’ voices ringing in their brains, egging them on to find some nice Jewish boy or girl.

Amy was chumming with Margo and Helen. Her girlfriends, not Jewish, were indifferent to religious preferences and didn’t mind trying to land a good catch at an event billed for Jewish singles.

They’d come to the dance together, then split up to troll different parts of the room. So far, Amy had hooked an internist (“A doctor, that’s good!” says Mom), an Israeli (“Oy, they’re so aggressive”), and a paralegal with a cute smile (“What, not a lawyer?”).

Midway through the event, they compared their progress. Margo had met an environmental scientist and a writer who worked for a trade association, while Helen had a securities broker and a computer programmer on the line. They all agreed that none of these guys were terribly compelling, but they were there to meet men, so they bravely plunged back into the crowd, hoping to find Mr. Right.

Lord, Amy hated these meat markets. Well, if the evening’s catch turned out to be a blue plate special of Other Fish in the Sea, at least she knew they were all cutthroats.

If you’re shy and uncomfortable about speaking up, don’t worry! A lot of guys are more than willing to fill up empty conversational spaces talking about themselves. If he’s shy and needs some encouragement to talk, it is easy to get a conversation flowing.

The keys to being a good conversationalist are similar to successful angling skills: observing the stream, blending your lure into the natural environment, and keeping connected with the fish once he’s on the line.

In conversation, this translates to:

• Make eye contact while talking and listening.
• Pay attention to what he is saying.
• Avoid interrupting – if he doesn’t finish his sentence before you start talking, you’re interrupting.
• Ask questions rather than make statements. You’ll get to talk about yourself in due course.

If a guy doesn’t give you the opportunity to talk about yourself, chances are he’s a blowfish. Sea trout, talkative as they are, know when to shut up and listen. The border between a trout and an Other Fish in the Sea rests on such very fine lines.

Many modern guys have cultivated cooking skills, but the times haven’t changed so much that a man doesn’t appreciate a delicious home-cooked meal made by someone else. And there are still plenty of trout that can’t cook worth a darn.

The lure of being a good cook is not obvious, unless you meet at a potluck party and can point out the fine dish that you meticulously prepared. You can make sure to bring your culinary prowess up early in the conversation, but beware of tossing out fancy French food terms unless you know the correct pronunciation. He might know more than you do.

Inviting a trouser trout for a home-cooked meal is a very intimate overture. Make sure he’s someone you want to know better first, because he’s going to be in your home.

Keep the menu simple, with minimal requirements for last-minute preparations. You don’t want a crazed demeanor while juggling several complicated dishes detracting attention from your stellar self or the food.

As any home economics teacher can tell you, successful home entertaining requires more than just cooking skills. Your domicile must be clean, the table set, appropriate background music selected. Even a casual get-together involves some planning and preparation. If you’re not up for it, go out to eat.

Even if you’re not having him over for dinner, keep your refrigerator and pantry stocked with at least the basics for entertaining – some decent beer or wine, soda, some fruit and cheese, easily prepared comestibles. It’s nice to linger together over a little snack if the evening’s going well.

If you land a trout who can cook, bravo! Mealtimes can be a fun shared activity. Bon appetit!

When you have a dog, you get out for walks on a regular basis, which is good for your health as well as for casting practice. A frisky dog with an attractive personality gives a guy a good excuse to talk to you. If he’s got a dog, it gives you an excuse to talk to him.

If you both have dogs, they will no doubt try to sniff each other’s genitals, giving you an excuse to toss a harmless leader line about dog manners, something like, “I’ve always thought that was a great way to get to know someone.”

You can casually determine if he often visits that particular park, and perhaps he’ll make a mental note to return. You’ll know you share a love of dogs, maybe you’ve got some other interests in common.

Big friendly dogs like Labrador retrievers or basset hounds are better companions for striking up casual conversations than small high-strung dogs like terriers. If you have to yell at your pooch in a vain attempt to calm it down while chatting with a lunker, it’s like having unruly children come along on a first date.

You can also take exotic pets for a walk to get interesting results. A cat on a leash attracts much more attention than any old dog, but you’ll need a good story to go with it (“I have to get her out of the house occasionally or she consumes tortilla chips while my back is turned.”). One friend of mine ventures out with a pet parrot or cockatiel perched on her head or shoulder – always a sure-fire conversation starter.

Synthetic lures are useful to encourage what’s called big-egg behavior – a magnetic response to larger-than-normal attractors, a phenomenon that occurs in many wildlife species.

As M.R. Montgomery noted in The Way of the Trout, “The human being is not above this sort of thing, as evidenced by the behavior of some of us when confronted with secondary sexual characteristics of the gigantic sort. Not only big bosoms but big eyes are somehow more attractive to men than merely functional ones.”

Many, many women have succumbed to the siren song of the plastic surgeon. My opinion: artificially enhancing one’s chest with implants is stupid. More than 440,000 women who have suffered as a result of their implants participated in a 1994 class-action lawsuit against five manufacturers.

These women suffered symptoms that included fatigue, muscle aches and spasms, nausea, sinusitis, depression, chronic pain, severe hardening of the breasts at the implant site, loss of sensation, joint pain, tingling in the limbs, night sweats, hair loss, rheumatoid arthritis, and other unpleasant physical malfunctions.

I can understand women who want implants as replacement after breast cancer surgery. I am less sympathetic toward anglers who augment two functional, if smaller-than-desired breasts. Even with improvements in implant technology, the pursuit of cleavage is not worth the risks of implants. If you feel “you must, you must, you must increase the bust,” get some falsies and stuff your bra.

When fishing for trout, you may endure certain discomforts, such as mosquitoes, sunburn, wet clothes, cold hands and feet. Similarly, when angling for trouser trout, you tolerate some discomfort if the lure is effective. Such is the case with lingerie.

While garters are sexy, those little clips that hold the stockings can really dig into the back of your legs. Satin and lace bustiers gouge your rib cage, fishnet stockings impress patterns on your legs, and barely-there thongs give you a perpetual wedgie. Fortunately, most women don’t have to wear these items more than a few hours. Often, they’ll come off soon after they’re revealed.

Those underthings designed for all-day augmentation – The Wonder Bra, with its cleavage-enhancing properties, shapers, formerly known as girdles, and support panty hose – help make a less-than-perfect body look good, but are not particularly comfortable.

Whatever advantage they provide in shapeliness may be negated by a perpetually pained look hearkening back to the dour expressions of women in turn-of-the-century portraits (no doubt prompted by their tight corsets and domineering trout). Still, many well-endowed anglers find these undergarments provide blessed support under the pull of gravity.

Happily, not all sexy lingerie is uncomfortable. Silk camisoles and shorts, satiny nightshirts, even clingy cotton tank tops feel and look good to both angler and trout. Well-fitting, flattering undergarments let an angler feel superb while looking her best.