It’s hard to pinpoint the origins of the “Women Want Me. Fish Fear Me” mantra, and it’s even harder to identify the exact time when it was co-opted by young people — particularly young queer people.
In its early days, the phrase graced T-shirts and the backs of pickup trucks along with other goofy fishing mottos, from the chaste, “Good things come to those who bait” to the cheeky, “Of course I come fast, I got fish to catch!” Documented spottings saw it pop up at a 2002 Alan Jackson concert and in a 2009 column in The Daily Oklahoman, in which writer Jackie Papandrew shared that her father “will probably want to be buried in” his “Women Want Me. Fish Fear Me” shirt.
