What Your Favorite Fish Says About You (A Field Guide)

Tell me what fish you chase and I'll tell you who you are. After thirty-some years of boat ramps, bait shops and gas station coffee at 4 a.m., I'm convinced the fish picks the fisherman. The walleye guy and the bass guy might fish the same lake, but they are not the same species of human.

So here's my field guide. Eleven fish, eleven types of angler, all of them people I've fished with (and at least four of them are me). Find yourself. Find your buddy. Then go ahead and send this to him, because he needs to know you know.

His fish	What it says about him	You'll hear him say
Walleye	Night owl, patient, slightly mysterious	"They'll turn on right at dark."
Musky	Optimist. Possibly unwell.	"It followed! That counts."
Northern pike	Lives fast, loses lures faster	"Bit me off again."
Brown trout	Thinker, overthinker, fly box hoarder	"Wrong hatch."
Rainbow trout	Cheerful, loud, always needs the net	"NET! NET! NET!"
Smallmouth bass	Competitive, a little bit of a storyteller	"Pound for pound, best fighter in the lake."
Bluegill	Nostalgic, easygoing, happiest guy at the dock	"This is how I learned."
Yellow perch	Practical, owns a fillet knife, feeds the family	"We'll do a fish fry."
Channel catfish	Mad scientist of bait recipes	"Don't open that bucket."
Flathead catfish	Big-game guy in a lawn chair	"Live bait only."
Giant snakehead	Adventurer, probably has a passport stamp from Thailand	"You had to be there."

The walleye guy: patient, nocturnal, hard to read

The walleye guy shows up when everyone else is packing up. Walleye have that famous glassy eye because it gathers light, so they feed best at dusk and dawn, and so does he. He's quiet and patient, owns at least one ice auger, and talks about "eyes" like they're old friends.

His shirt is the original that started this whole series: the WALLEYE Definition T-Shirt, which defines the fish as "the marble-eyed phantom" that strikes at dusk and leaves you wondering if it was ever really there. Every walleye guy I've shown it to has read it out loud.

The musky guy: the last true optimist

The musky guy believes. The Wisconsin DNR calls musky the "fish of 10,000 casts," and he has cast most of them, some of them twice. A follow (when a musky trails the lure to the boat and then leaves) makes his whole week. Man, I respect it. I also worry about him a little.

The MUSKELLUNGE Definition nails it: a fish that makes "one followed my lure" count as a good day.

The pike guy and the bass guy: adrenaline junkies

These two want the hit. The pike guy throws spinnerbaits and loses them, because pike have a mouth full of teeth and zero respect for fishing line. Ask him how many lures he lost last summer and watch him do math. His shirt is the NORTHERN PIKE Definition: "A lure thief with teeth."

The smallmouth guy will tell you, unprompted, that smallies fight harder pound for pound than anything in fresh water. He's not wrong. He also rounds up. A two-pounder becomes "easy four" by the time he's at the truck. The SMALLMOUTH BASS Definition calls it out: a two-pound fish that lets you believe it's six, until you see it.

The trout guys: overthinkers and celebrators

There are two kinds of trout guy, and you can tell them apart by volume.

The brown trout guy is quiet. He studies bugs. He has a fly box organized by color and season, and he still says "wrong hatch" every time they don't bite. Brown trout are notoriously picky, which is exactly why he loves them. His shirt is the BROWN TROUT Definition, about owning forty-seven flies and not having the right one.

The rainbow trout guy is the opposite. Rainbows jump. He yells. The whole river knows when he's hooked up. The RAINBOW TROUT Definition describes a fish that jumps for freedom while you shout for the net. If that isn't him, I'll eat my waders.

The panfish guys: the happiest people on the water

The guy having the most fun at the lake has a bobber and a cooler full of bluegill. Most of us caught a bluegill first. The bluegill guy never forgot how good that felt. The BLUEGILL Definition says we should be grateful fish don't all grow to twenty pounds. (Imagine. A twenty-pound bluegill would pull you off the dock.)

The perch guy is the practical one. He fishes to eat. He has a fillet knife he won't let you touch. His shirt, the YELLOW PERCH Definition, explains how "we caught dinner" turns into an evening of filleting. Ask his wife. She knows.

The catfish guys: bait chemists and night shift legends

Catfish find food by taste and smell, and they've got taste buds all over their bodies. That fact explains everything about the channel cat guy. He makes bait in his garage. It smells like a crime scene. He's proud of it. The CHANNEL CATFISH Definition describes a fish with expensive taste in things you refuse to smell.

The flathead guy is different. He wants a monster, and flatheads prefer live prey, so he fishes live bait from a lawn chair at 2 a.m. The FLATHEAD CATFISH Definition describes a fish that considers your best catch a suitable appetizer.

The snakehead guy: the one with the stories

The first giant snakehead I ever saw hit a frog lure in a Thai canal so hard I dropped my sandwich. Then I nearly dropped the rod. Giant snakehead are native to Southeast Asia, and the guy who chases them is the guy with the best stories at every barbecue.

The GIANT SNAKEHEAD Definition is basically my autobiography: the reason you spend all morning watching a frog, then nearly drop the rod.

Which fish are you?

If you saw yourself in two of these, you're a multi-species guy, and I'm sorry about your garage. If you saw your buddy, you know what to do with that link.

Every one of these shirts lives together on the Fish Definition Shirts page. Same vintage engraving style, same dictionary layout, a different fish and a different joke on each. And if you'd rather sort people by how they fish instead of what they fish for, our types of fishermen post does exactly that.

For the record, I'm a walleye guy who lies like a smallmouth guy and makes bait like a catfish guy.

Tight lines,
Jake