"Fish or cut bait." What does it mean, exactly? Stop fishing and cut your line, or stop fishing and do something else useful, like cutting bait? This is part of a complete episode.
My first time using this site so not quite sure what goes where. BUT - my comment regards the expression "fish or cut bait". It is not simply a statment of "do one thing or another". It means to be in a qaandry, one where no matter your choice, you may end up losing.
At times when fishing, "the bite is on" and each time you put your bait in the water you have a fish. If you are fishing with cutbait, you only cut as much as you need. However, with the bite on, you might start to get low on bait. You need to cut more. Simple, except for the fact that by the time you get back to fishing the bite might be over and obviously you should have opted to keep fishing and finish out the bait. What to do?!
I always believed it mainly meant do something useful and, therefore, like this discussion on Wikipedia.
PTclone said:
My first time using this site so not quite sure what goes where. BUT - my comment regards the expression "fish or cut bait". It is not simply a statment of "do one thing or another". It means to be in a qaandry, one where no matter your choice, you may end up losing.
That jives with Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon captioned "How fishermen blow their own minds." (The only online reference I could find)
If used as a question, I could see it being a quandry. But if it's used as a command, like I see most of the time, I would take Emmett's interpretation.
EmmettRedd said:
I always believed it mainly meant do something useful and, therefore, like this discussion on Wikipedia.
Same as "either phone or get out of the booth." Oops, maybe younger people don't know what a phone booth is.