Because it gives me an opportunity to smoke cigars and sip whisky from a flask... 😉
No one in my family fished, so a few sunnies brought home in a bucket by neighbors and seeing some pumpkin seeds suspended in a somewhat local reservoir is probably what memorized me into deciding I HAD to go fishing.
After being gifted a used casting rod & reel, I read everything I could find and picked the brains of the clerks at the local sporting stores when I bought the stuff I thought I needed. A short time later, I was invited by some experienced junior high school buddies to take public transportation (bus) one Sunday morning to a not-so-local reservoir.
The anticipation the night before was like Christmas on steroids so it was easy to get up to meet my friends around 4:30 am, catch the bus and somehow catch a fish on my first outing. With the memories of that and a few other firsts; fast forward a few decades I still get that same thrill whether its a trout or a suspended pumpkin seed.
FWIW - I was a somewhat delinquent "yoot"on that first outing and was off by myself when I caught that first fish. Coincidentally, I sipping my share of a bottle of cheap wine I went "in" on for the occasion and I smoked cigarettes...
That may explain why fishing, alcohol & tobacco still go together in my mind... 😎