One of the main troubles with Fishing was that Weller had done it better in Moonchildren, itself only a very promising play. In Fishing, much the same young people who had cavorted through their final year of college in Moonchildren were seen, a handful of years later, still romping through life. This time they were trying to find themselves in the Pacific Northwest, the last American frontier abutting the terra incognita of myth—of clear air, good earth, and hard, clean living….

Fishing is a play of texture. It captures accurately, I think, the sound and feel of whimsical, aimless, not yet uncontented lives, some of which will wander into usefulness, some into chronic dissatisfaction and dilettantism, and some, perhaps, into suicide. But except for this texture, the play gives us little else. It is as if a tailor showed us an expertly woven and ingeniously patterned piece of cloth, but teasingly refused to comply with our request to cut it into a suit. (p. 78)