A thrilling venture engaged in the pursuit of prey; a time for solitude and reflection; an occasion for relief and relaxation; or just good old fun: angling is all of these. Alongside divine bliss and sexual ecstasy, it's the perfect way to have a great time. When fishing you leave behind tiresome routines, the job and day-to-day etiquette. You exit the tedium of answering the phone or answering to most everybody. You escape a lot of phoniness. You don't need or want to be somewhere else. The "news," the economy, the "mess" are left to the uninitiated. The time is yours, and marvelously the fish and their world become your closest confidants. Diving off the turbidity of the humdrum to splash into the playground of fluid delight, an angler's synapses congratulate his freedom, his living in the moment. You're in heaven for an unobstructed stretch of unspoiled time. The viscera and soul jubilantly cheer. The heart applauds. Damn, you're fishing Fishing's renegade charm opposes the mainstream's glut of being in-your-head and the over-obsession with safety; resists obsessive doing and working. Fishing casts away stuck-up attitudes and social contrivances. Anyone who's taken up a rod and gotten a few hits waxes more and more reluctant to withdraw from the day's mystery and magic. A healthy resistance sets up against the usual monotony. No matter what age, gender, ethnicity or belief, with each cast the fisher's soul increases like an amusement park mounting with flirtatious energy and juvenile glee. With luck, a fish or two will be caught. And, if enticed by luckless adventure or suckered in by the lure of new tackle, if mocked by the fish themselves, the resonance remains irresistible. It's a world of wonder, drench and gotcha Fishing is like life would be if life were lots more fun. All-Nite Tackle Box is a collection of odds and ends for any fisher to enjoy. A few vignettes are culled from my previous writings in The Painted Trout and Fishing Mind, Fishing Body; the rest from my haphazard store of photos, collages and scribbles. The collection's topmost attitude honors angling's love of risk and play and the penchant for silliness when not concentrating on getting a hit. Its mettle is the zany and eccentric. Whether a bait caster, a fly fisherman or a fan of spinning, whether a catch-and-release devotee or simply a lover of fresh-caught catfish, All-Nite Tackle Box is the kind of backwater entertainment that wanders into the offbeat, with the mind's eye of a fish carrying the excitement onward.