fish to fry, to have better/bigger/other

To have other, more important matters to attend to. Referring to fish cookery, this term dates from the seven- teenth century. “I fear he has other fish to fry,” wrote John Evelyn in his Memoirs (1660). Actually, this term also appeared in an early translation of Rabelais’s Pantagruel (1552) by Motteux, but it did not seem to catch on until later.