Selling a business with a fishing rod is like casting a line, dropping the lure, and waiting. In the real world, this involves confidentially marketing your business for sale using various media: online media, trade publications, newspapers, and others. This is a passive approach, in which you place the advertisement, then sit and wait (visualize your average fisherman patiently waiting).
When fishing, you typically do not know who is going to bite the bait — it could be a 10-pound bass or a 50-pound tuna. You usually have a rough idea based on the body of water (media) you are fishing in, although there are always exceptions.
