Three “Are you fishing”? questions this morning on Allermuir Hill GM/SS-171. My reply with straight face:“Brown Trout”… then my smile cracked and I explained at great length what SOTA was and about amateur radio in general.
How many “Are you fishings” I will get on Arthur’s Seat GM/SS-272 later this afternoon is anyones guess. If I get one or more I will report back here… I will say Brown Trout again I think…
73 Phil
Best comeback for “Are you fishing?“
This reminds me of my encounter with Police (Gendarmerie) on Ménez Bré FL/NO-079 back in July.
It’s a drive-up summit. As we arrived at the top, there were a couple of cars parked, including a police car! We went for a 10 minutes walk around the summit, checked out the church etc. We could see the two police officers walking around; bit of a strange sight in the middle of nowhere really… It was keen to start the activation as the weather was a bit unstable, but wasn’t too keen to do this in front of them as I knew they would come asking questions! As I was in a hurry, and wasn’t doing anyway illegal anyway, I decided to go ahead…
So I setup my mast; I had not yet turned on my radio that, of course, they started to walk towards me 
I made a few steps towards them and they asked “Ça mord?”, which is really the equivalent for “are you catching anything”? They immediately said they were joking and guessed what I was doing (probably not their very first encounter with radio amateurs). Their second question was whether I was able to listen to Police transmissions We had a short and pleasant chat as I explained a bit more about SOTA. I finally found why they were here: they knew an illegal rave party was going to take place in the area and were checking possible sites!
This one of my favorite threads on the reflector. 
It is my nature to give smart ass answers similar to many given above. On the other hand, my lead sherpa, Mrs. K7EEX, trained in education and having worked as a state park ranger, is a master of explaining SOTA to passers-by. More than once while I’ve been activating, I’ve looked over to a crowd of people standing around her as she explains how I can talk to people around the globe from the mountain tops.
It is surprising to me how many people know what SOTA is here in Colorado.
On Arthur’s Seat GM/SS-272 yesterday:
“Are you surveying”.
“Yes, I am surveying the short wave bands to see what I can hear”
“Aw… Great, awesome!”
"Is that a Mezuza?" (Israeli man)
“What’s a Mezuza, and how do you spell that?”
Friendly man spells it and explains it is a ring or cordon that can be put around a jewish neighbourhood…
Wikipedia says differently, so no idea what that was all about!
So that was Arthur’s Seat yesterday, 28 QSOs on 60m and 40m in difficult crowded conditions, people everywhere, and close to my antenna too as they tried to find a route down away from the official path. I still haven’t chased it myself. No chance of operating from the summit itself, crowded, with two members of a family continuously coughing. I settled for the highest gorse bush to support the 5m pole and dipole on the flank of the hill about 15m vertical height down from the highest point. I won’t be returning. This morning we will go to Scald Law GM/SS-125 which should be a lot quieter people wise and maybe no one will ask questions…
73 Phil
Me too [especially to my wife]. Most questioners are innocently curious so I don’t want to embarrass them and have them regret asking me by my being ‘cute’. Also, I’ve found frequently that strangers don’t see my jokey answer as funny [Actually, not just strangers, my family too]. So, I play it safe now and say something brief about amateur radio from hilltops. Most folk are genuinely interested (if I keep it short).
With permission from Roman - DL3TU, I used his idea to make a page and QR code of my own.
I did a few adaptations in the text that suited me better.
This is what I printed, I will laminate it and it goes into my backpack for my EA5 trip at the end of september. It leads to an English and a Spanish page on my blog (I hope).
I won’t post the links to my blog here … you have to scan the QR codes of course ! 
Have comments, see any typos or language errors ? Let me know !
73,
Luc ON7DQ
I read the material at the link from the QR code and I think you’ve done an excellent job describing SOTA and of course, why there is a fishing pole on a mountain. Well done, Luc.
73 Andrew vk1da/2uh
Brilliant idea, and well executed. Not sure about the mug shot in the middle however 
If you see folk scanning the QR code I suggest trying to emulate the photo in real life. 
Mark
Perfect response Chris… Like it… 73, N6PKT
Great job with the QR code Luc.
73 de Geoff vk3sq
There I was, in my favoringe trout stream,
after setting several hooks into deep dark water.
Unfortunately, I was playing golf at the time!
Now I got it. SOTA obviously stands for Salmon On The Air.
Seriously Old Topic Alert 
I am glad to see I not the only rare who has this kind of experiences, hihi.
I usually respond with a lot od details exceps if I am running pileup. Anyway, when I go to a overcrowded summit, I deploy the pole far from the center of the summit, this way I can save myself from giving explanations.
I remember once I told some guys that I was measuring radioactivity at the tops due to the Fokushima accident, hihi.
A lot of people , almost in Spain, doesn´t ask about “what are you fishing” otherwise "what are you measuring?
Tell them , you are after flying fish and that they are plentiful on this summit
Declan
ps I find for a serious answer , if you ask them have they heard of amateur radio (usually they say yes) and have they heard of geocaching (they usually have) and explain it as radio geocaching where you are the temporary cache , folk understand the concept well
…that’s a great thought !
73 Armin
That works indeed very well, if people know what geocaching is 
I was at a pistol competition when my friend Pete saw me reading an issue of QST during a break. He said he didn’t get Ham radio because all Hams ever talked about on the air was their radios. I responded “Pete we shoot holes in paper all day.” He smiled and got the point.
There seems to be a few threads covering this topic. In another I added:
When approached once, I replied that I was using Sonar to ‘mine’ for rare worms as we looked where the far end of EFHW was tethered down. I then pointed up to the top of the 10m telescopic pole, that was quite bent over, and explained that this last worm was putting up a good struggle and that I’d been at it for 10mins. The person walked away looking even more puzzled 
73, Lea M0XPO
