| The
profusion of online discussion boards where anglers by the thousand
share techniques, locations, rumors, armchair philosophy and, above
all, detailed firsthand fish reports, has been by nearly every measure
a great boon to the sport of saltwater fishing. Discussion boards have
made fishing more accessible to newcomers, given the community an
invaluable means of uniting both socially and politically, and proven a
spectacular tool for staying on top of the latest bite. What could possibly be bad about any of that? Well, I think such a ready source of so much accurate, same-day information about current fishing can actually keep people from going out as much as they would otherwise. After all, if you already know you’re not going to catch anything, why burn the fuel? I know I go out less often in California than I did living in Baja, where current reports just weren’t available. I can see how, to a mind more practical than my own, that might sound like a good thing. If you could skip the slow days and fish only when it’s good, you’d certainly catch a whole lot more fish per gallon of fuel and per hour on the water. But to me it seems a shame. I absolutely believe the old saw about a bad day fishing being better than a good day at work. For me, just being on the water is a privilege and a pleasure in itself, no matter the fishing, the weather or the company. But now, because of today’s unprecedented availability of up-to-the-minute fishing information, I spend more of those proverbial bad days of fishing at work instead, which we all seem to agree is worse still. Another old saw says, “You won’t know if you don’t go,” and that one’s also very true. Remember that bad fishing always improves and good fishing always deteriorates. So next time you set aside a day to go fishing, don’t put it off because the Internet says they aren’t biting. Go out and take your best shot anyway. Just because they didn’t bite yesterday doesn’t mean they won’t today. |