Big Game Fishing
/It’s annoying to see poorly executed verbal technique in magic. It’s one thing to see someone fumble with a sleight, that’s understandable. To master a sleight, you need to get good at doing it under the pressure of a live performance. And sometimes you’ll screw that up. That’s fine.
But when people have shitty verbal technique (like equivoque or fishing), it’s because they’re underestimating their audience, and they’ve just chosen to overlook a weakness in their method and perform the trick anyway.
My least favorite fishing technique in magic is when you have a couple of options—say a red card and a black card—and the magician says, “It’s not a red card, is it?” There are magicians who insist that this will be seen as a “hit” either way.
Sure, so long as you ignore your spectator’s reaction and how language works, that will be a hit.
Here’s a video example of how this technique actually goes over, taken from an old post…
Here is Devin Knight, trying to use this tactic in his recent Penguin Live lecture. You'll notice the spectator doesn't react as if Devin has provided information, she reacts as if she's giving him information, because she is. And what does the audience do? They laugh, because it such a shitty, obvious gambit that they assume he must have meant it as a joke.
Big Game Fishing is a technique for your fishing toolbox (well, tackle box, I guess) that doesn’t use some wishy-washy statement to get—at best—a soft hit. Instead, it uses some definitive statements to fish between two objects without there being—apparently—any misses.
Here’s how it works.
Imagine you’re performing for someone with the Snaps deck. You’ve used some techniques that allow them to mix the deck and perform the cross-cut force on themselves. As a final moment of apparent freedom, you tell them that while you turn away from them, they can look at the card on the bottom of the top packet or the top of the bottom packet (“either of the two cards at which you cut”).
Because of the way you set it up, you know they’re now thinking either a Ferris wheel or a tennis ball.
You write something down quickly and then start to tell them your impressions of what they’re thinking of.
Here are the two ways it might play out.
They’re thinking of the tennis ball
“Here’s what I’m picking up. This is something that you can hold in your hand, correct?”
Yes
“It’s not just something you could hold in your hand. You often hold it in your hand when using it. I’m picking up a definite form to it… but it’s not really hard like a wrench or something.”
Pause. Thinking for a moment.
“Yes, I think my first impression was correct. You’re thinking of a tennis ball.”
They’re thinking of the Ferris wheel
“Here’s what I’m picking up. This is something that you can hold in your hand, correct?”
No.
“Hmm… I’m pretty sure I’m right on this. You can hold it in your hand. It’s… like squishy. And maybe sticky too. Yes?”
Not at all.
“Yes… yes… I’m never wrong, and this is coming through so clearly. If I’m wrong about this [I tap the paper on the table] I’ll buy you dinner. What image were you thinking of?”
A Ferris wheel.
I turn over the paper on the table and it says Ferris wheel.
“That’s exactly what I was picking up from you. A sticky, soft, hand-held Ferris wheel.”
Big Game Fishing
That’s the technique, basically. You make a physical commitment to one option, but then you start verbally describing the other option.
If your verbal description is accurate, then you just ignore your physical commitment and put it away at some point without commenting on it. You put the slip of paper in your pocket or the card back in the deck. Writing something down or pulling out a card was just part of your process of honing in on the thought. It doesn’t need to be referenced or shown because you’ve already told them what they’re thinking of, so it would be redundant to say, “And look, that’s what I wrote down too.” Of course, it is.
But if your verbal description is inaccurate, then you further commit to it and make it even more wrong, so it seems like you’re wildly off track. Then, when it comes time to show what you wrote, it seems like your inaccurate statements were just to create tension, or to misdirect from the climax. You were just making a “big game” out of the reveal by pretending to be wrong. Of course, it doesn’t matter what you said, because you had made this clear, physical commitment to one word (or card or picture or whatever).
Magicians already use this sort of misdirect frequently in their tricks. They’ll make it seem like they’re off base before showing that they were actually correct. Here we’re just taking that theatrical gambit and using it as a methodological one.
This won’t fit into every sort of fishing procedure, but I use it quite frequently.
What I use this most with is probably the Hoy book test. I don’t usually say, “And look at the first word on the page.” Instead, I tell them to read the first line and think of an unusual or interesting word. I can usually narrow that down to two options, and then use this technique to apparently nail the one genuinely free choice of word from a “random” page in a book they freely chose that I’ve never seen before.
As always, point out any prior credits to me. I originally came up with it because I didn’t like the fishing that was used in John Bannon’s AK-47. But it took me a while to realize that it could be used more generally whenever you’re down to two options.
