Bishop wrote “The Fish” in free verse, which means the poem doesn’t maintain a strict, repeating meter. That said, the poem does have a loose sense of regular, three-beat rhythm. Consider the poem’s opening lines as an example:

     I caught a tremendous fish
     and held him beside the boat
     half out of water, with my hook
     fast in a corner of his mouth.
     He didn't fight.
     He hadn't fought at all.

All but one of these lines have three clear beats, with the stressed syllables marked in bold text. The only exception is the fifth line, which has only two beats. Despite averaging three stressed beats, these lines have little else in common in terms of rhythm. Each line has a different pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, which makes it unhelpful to analyze the poem using more traditional scansion methods. But even without close analysis, the reader can hear the casual sound of Bishop’s rhythmically varied, three-beat lines. Although the language is very carefully wrought and precise, the use of free verse creates an illusion of casual spontaneity.