Thread: This is the end, my friend...

I am going to stick around these forums and keep posting,

BUT I made a mistake in posting pictures of our bragging fish in part because where we fish is way too public and we have picked up a set of those who track us around the waters anyway ending up crowding us off our fishing spots. Fact of life in the deep Metro I guess. Forums like this carry a pile of lurkers who converge on any publicized bites making it difficult to impossible to continue to work them.

Last evening we were only able to return to a favorite spot because the wannabees had all given up on it and left it open after a couple of weeks of their failing to take fish there. In another area where we fished first last evening, as soon as we started to take anything we got crowded off that location, too. All that was was a few dinks in the first place, but that was more than the crowd around us was doing, and the next thing we knew bobbers were splashing right in front of us and still taking nothing except our fishing spaces. I for one am not going to get into a fight over a fishing spot. I will move and have easily a dozen and more other places to fish within short driving distances on some half dozen or more local lakes.

There is a certain amount of satisfaction in being able to see the wannabees come up empty, but that also means that we have to do some cruising to find open fishing opportunities and that is a real drag. So no more pictures of either us nor our fish nor the backgrounds in the pictures that point networks of lurkers to where we fish. We get watched closely enough as it is and still have trouble shaking the trailers and would be copycats. The way we fish takes some space more than crowds of followers allow us. We actually had a situation last summer where we moved to a different lake after taking one nice fish and within minutes of getting there had someone who recognized us congradulate us on the fish we had just taken on the other lake. It does not pay to underestimate how rapidly word travels these days with the number of cell phone networks that are looking for easy fish.

If that sounds rude of us, we will not make any apologies. We do not like fishing shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of splash down bobbers that pay no attention to our casting lanes or personal space, and we are tired of having to drive around from spot to spot to find enough open area to effectively work for our fish.

I don't mind sharing techniques, not at all, nor being friendly on the water, in fact that is one of the benefits of shoreline fishing, but I wish folks would go out and work out their own spots and develop their own techniques like we did over the past better part of a decade. We worked through our own share of skunks and over our own learning curve and that continues as we keep experimenting with new offerings and new patterns, and while that definitely had important help from others, it is not something where we crowded others out either. There are crappies all over the place, more than enough, including some real slabs, without stepping on others' toes.

There gets to be a point where one comes to resent a bunch of strangers trying to horn in on what one has worked hard and carefully to develop. But I aint about to fight over no fishing spot; I will just move and catch my fish some other place. When the wannabees and their meat buckets finally give up I will come back. I just no longer intend to encourage them to seek me out and crowd me out. Bear in mind that I do not claim to own the water or fishing rights to any specific part of it over any other fisherman, since these are public waters with public access, but I would very much like it if people quit trying to move right into my hip pocket and horn in on any bite I happen to find, especially those that are looking to fill a meat bucket.

That is bitchy enough, but the beginning of last evening was not pleasant. The end of the evening turned out real good and we had that all to ourselves, but I still got a bad taste in my mouth from how it started.

CT,

I am not so sure that instant gratification is so much the problem to my way of thinking, although fishing seems to have more than its share of it, as is too much lack of just plain common courtesy.
There have always been far fewer experts than participants in any recreation, and I think that is to be expected and is pretty normal in the course of things, but the willingness to horn in on others' performance is really what twists my gut. That is no doubt every bit the fault of failure in upbringing as anything else. I really think you have put your finger on the source. For me it has gotten to the point that I need a reason to trust before I share. I didn't use to be that way, but once burned twice wary I guess, although it has taken more than just once in a few things.

There really is nothing that I do well that I learned all on my own, and I regret that I do not trust far too many to share as well as has been shared with me. There has been good reason for that but I certainly wish it were not so.