Spotburn thread

[DarkSkies]

The beginning of the season invariably spurs talk about spot burning.

I was going to let this thread lay undisturbed. Today I tried to explain something somewhere else, so might as welll post my response here....


The OP:

"I've shared some things on here, and lost some good fishing spots because of it. Say that place gets over run, and the trash really piles up. The local town gets sick of it, so they put an end to it.
To whoever said its a big river, with plenty of room? Finding a place to wet a line, and finding a place to catch fish are 2 different things.
I'd be willing to bet that most guys have a place they like to fish, and only a couple guys know about it."


My response agreeing with him:

*******, we have the same problems in north Jersey. Guys started catching bass in Raritan bay spring 2009. One genius bragged about his location and town on the internet. The next day there were 75 people in a 350' stretch of beach because he had to satisfy his ego by saying he got 25 bass there.

He's still bragging about it this year, and doesn't realize the damage he caused with his specific report. Here's what the place looked like:









Another nearby town got overrun by fishermen after a series of internet reports giving out the exact location as a "bass hotspot" and descriptions and pics of big fish people were landing.

Fishermen were leaving trash all over the place and homeowners were pissed. That town started ticketing fishermen on previously unenforced parking violations. We had to do a beach cleanup there to try to get back in the good graces of the homeowners.

That's just the back bay area, there are more stories like that.







As for the ocean, in Monmouth county, we (surf fishermen) lost access at St Alphonse's retreat because after a mad-dog bite, some guy snuck into the priest's sanctuary to use their bathroom without permission, and gave the priest a hard time when he was caught. Some guy was also caught cleaning fish near a religious statue.

A few blocks away from that, the town enacted severely restrictive parking regulations after it received complaints of pissing on lawns and fishermen tresspassing, cleaning fish, leaving the racks in homeowner garbage cans, and other things like that. Another place lost by people being too free with specific intel on the internet.

Last Fall 2009 in Mantoloking, the town clamped down and changed the parking regs after a few noreasters destroyed the public fishermen walkways. Fishermen were using private homeowner access areas to get to the beach, leaving their litter on private property as they did it. I wouldn't say the Mantoloking case was pure spot burning. It was more a case of careless fishermen. It still caused trouble for those of us who fished that area regularly.

It might be different for people like **** or others who fish from boats, but for shore fishermen it's a big issue.

So I'm not trying to pass judgement here. Wanting to help people is admirable. Lots of times in helping people new friendships are forged. If that's a goal of someone who's fishing, that's great. I didn't read any malice in the sentences ******* posted.

But there are a lot of guys who have been fishing areas for a long time. The primary reason they're out there at all hours of the night is to catch fish, or catch bigger fish when no one else is around.

There are sites out there where you'll be censored or banned for even complaining about spot burning. The admins encourage it to bring traffic and revenue to the site.

I have to give you guys credit for at least being able to have this discussion.

I'm just tryiing to point out, that there is a balance between helping and giving too much information. For the guys who fish from shore, sedges, bay or river banks, specific spot info can sometimes hurt us because you never know how many lurkers are reading a report.

A spot doesn't belong to any one person or group. We all need to learn to share. However, I'm not willing to share a place with 300 guys at a time because of a specific internet report.
That's all.