Thread: There is the largest of pachyderms among us

There seems to be a rather prodigious elephant in our room and to ignore his presence is becoming rather difficult. I guess where ever an elephant decides to stand, his presence is rather profound and goes by with much notice, but this one is here and for now he is ours.

A professor in Philosophy once told me that watermelons are the root cause for drowning in the south. Baffled, I pressed him to continue and educate me on this absurd remark. He went on to say that watermelons ripen and are harvested for market during mid to late spring and as they are sold people begin to ingest them all across the southern states. And with that he produced a bar chart and on it two columns existed of equal height. One was the rising amount of watermelons sold per month and next to it, rising in kind to meet the previous graph in height, was the percentages of drowning victims in each of those months. The more watermelons that were sold, the more that were ate, an eerily similar percentage of people would slip below the waterline to never return above it. Right there in front of me were two professional reasonings factored out and graphed to show a connection. There were numbers and lines, different colors, a name in the corner followed by several titles that allowed one to know that the author of such a fool's errand was a well educated man and thus bore some integrity. Being smarter than a squirrel, though not by much, I pressed him and he yielded. Is was all bunk, bovine feces that he created to prove an ultimate truth. The problem with simple statistics is that they tend to reflect whatever it is that we want to see in them. Correlation does not constitute causation. Just because A happened at the same time as B, the two are none more related than birds and stingrays. Just because CDC rose in popularity at the same time as the fishing pressure began to escalate in our state, does not mean one caused the other.

I am not much one to ignore a matter at hand nor do I put much effort into skirting around issues as they arise. With any matter that involves more than one person, communication is key and compromise can only be reached when each side of the fence is understood by those who stand opposed. Our dichotomy, and this lengthy monologue, reflects the recent tension regarding the posting of reports and how much or little this information affects each lake as mentioned in the report. Now, as a matter of principle, I do not like to stand on a soap box and preach. I am fairly young and have the ability to see and comprehend the world only with my own eyes, as does everyone reading this. What I cannot do is see the world through anyone else's eyes, so to lecture those on a subject as if I had true facts is silly, as all we have to offer is opinion and at best, conjecture. So I will not tell you what is right, all I can offer is what I think. And what I think is that these reports serve much more good than bad. Sure, there are people who read these(and who are reading this now) who have no intention to help anyone else or contribute to this community at all. Maybe it's pride, not being able to admit they need the help, maybe it's intimidation... it may be tough for a new, or a well seasoned "rookie" even, to jump into the fray especially when we publicly take shots at each other from time to time over something as simple as a report and a few pictures. But I digress, as I can only run off on so many tangents, the question is "Do these reports make a difference as to pressure on a given lake?". My opinion, yes. Also my opinion, not very much. The way I see it is anglers that need this help are not the ones boating coolers full of mature crappie on any consistent basis. Heck, I don't do that and I like to think I kinda know what I am doing. My last report was a limit caught in Barnett amongst at least 40 other boats and yet only maybe five of us were bowed up consistently and that includes the ones that began to migrate around those that were producing feesh. The guys out there who really know what's going on usually have done this thing long enough to have enough friends to call to get the information they seek. The ones who chase reports versus sticking with a lake long enough to know it well, the ones who will study every tree and hill in your picture on the lake to try and find your hole, usually lack the experience to make much of the situation they find themselves in at any given time. Sometimes they even pop up with posts starting as "I'm so frustrated....." Even during the spring when crappie are as stupid as a group of boys squeaking their way through their newly deepened voices who would as much engage in a senseless bout of fisticuffs in the school yard in hopes of attracting a mate who in turn is unimpressed as it is. You remember that time where we acted with so much bravado in regards to the fairer sex yet were utterly terrified to even talk to a pretty lady as much as asking one to the first school dance. Yeah, that kind of stupid. So yes, people read these reports and sometimes will come to your home lake to chase the fish you were on, but to what level of success? And how many do we believe do this on a given day? Can we attribute more than a handful of boats that made your lake a destination who weren't planning on fishing there previously simply because they saw you were catching fish? 5 boats? 10? Anything more seems like a stretch to me. What's that on Grenada, 2% this time of year? I believe out of staters aren't driving in on whims to spend a week at the lake because our local boy wrote that he caught a nice limit. My opinion is that they were already planning to come and just want to see what they can expect. Maybe on the Big 4 you get some trailer jockeys shifting around simply due to the convenience of the big crappie cluster up there, on that I cannot speak. But I do not think these are necessarily the ones who are just whacking and stacking the fish regularly. Those guys just want to see what pattern you found so they can apply it to there own spots. Heck, Facebook gives 10 times the attention to these lakes.

Are we really going to keep hounding each other until Slab, our holy editor in chief, locks down the whole state forum for a spell? He has had to act on the sites behalf in, literally, like 50% of our last fishing reports. Being named the top destination in the nation for crappie enthusiasts, we have had the responsibility thrust upon us to be not only stewards of but representatives for our beloved sport, as well as the "hospitality" state. We will in one breath deflate a fellow anglers sense of pride and accomplishment for his catch and with the next breath congratulate our tournament anglers who fish in the myriad of national level tournaments held throughout our state as if the former held a candle to the latter in terms of added fishing pressure. There is no secret to be kept about crappie fishing in Mississippi it is top notch and the world is well aware.

We have the pleasure, neigh blessing!, of anglers who have known these lakes since they were just fields before the first rock was dropped to turn them into the waters we know now. We have the opportunity to pick their brains over their generations of experience fishing them and listen to their stories of the way it used to be. Heck, between G, Satdoc, and Scrat alone there is like 350 combined years worth of experience ya Geezers! They have seen it with there own eyes from when ten cars at the ramp was considered a busy day to now when we have parking lots that rival mega malls, but I do not believe this forum has the impact that we give it credit for in terms of decimating fish populations. Though I do know this forum should be given credit for the good that it does within our community, and that I don't believe I have to outline.

This is simply my opinion, and I would love to hear yours as well, and so long as we keep it civil hopefully we can keep the boss from locking this out too. I respect each and every person here, we all have our opinions based on our own experiences and your options hold as much weight as mine.

Respectfully,

Matthew




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