What does “Every day is fishing day, but not every day is catching day” mean?

Keep showing up, but don’t expect a win every time. You can put the boat out every morning; whether the fish come is not up to you. The effort is yours to give daily — the results arrive on their own schedule. (VOICE-PASS)

From the Pick Sense from Nonsense collection · Updated September 2026

Said on two islands

• 🇧🇧 Barbados Evuh day is fishing day, but evuh day en’ ketching day.
• 🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago Every day is fishing day, but not every day is catching day.

The picture behind it

In the fishing villages — Oistins and Bathsheba in Barbados, Castara and Charlotteville in Tobago — the boats go out before light whether yesterday was good or bad. Some mornings the nets come back heavy. Some mornings they come back with nothing but seaweed. The work is the same either way.

How it’s used

It is comfort and a push at the same time. You’ll hear it after a job interview that went nowhere, a slow day selling at the market, a season that didn’t pay. The meaning underneath is go back out tomorrow.

It works the other way too. The one who comes home with a big catch shouldn’t get too proud: tomorrow may be a fishing day, not a catching day. (VOICE-PASS)

Where it comes from

You’ll find the line quoted by anglers and business writers as though it were a general motto. In the Caribbean it belongs to fishing communities, and it is one of the sayings at the heart of this collection — the one our story began with.