The Good Old days of Fishing......

[fishinmission78]

The "good old days" we were talking about...were only 8-10 years ago......
When you could go out for a night of fishing.....and pull in 10-20 fish or more......

** Caveat......These "good old days" don't even compare to the fantastic fishing that existed after the bass rebounded after the moratorium, in the late 80's and 1990's.
But it occurred to me many of the newer folks out there fishing don't have that as a frame of reference.....

It also came to mind...
There is a lot of internet chatter about "finding the fish"
"The fish are there you just have to work for them"
"If you know what you are doing, you can catch regularly"
and other naive phrases..........

I asked myself how there could be a disconnect between the griping we were doing.....
And some of the bravado you see out there today on the internet?.....some of it ending up as "Well if you are not catching maybe you just don't know how to fish!"....and other ridiculous statements........

ds you have to realize that 70% of the posters on the internet today grew up playing doom and other first person shooter games. There attention span is about 30 secs. I started to notice this last year with the cell phone crowd. Guy would fish 15 minutes and then check his cell phone for reports. My last very good years were 2002-2007. I also have caught up to 50 bass on a great night. It seems to me those days are long gone. The generation that fishes today considers 5 bass to be epic and is so self centered and lazy most will not work beyond 2 hours for one fish. They only come out spring and fall blitz time. Most stay home when its freezing like it was last nite which is ok with me. And the rudeness and mugging -saw that in the other thread don't get me started. One of these days I'm going to take a dump on some of these muggers heads. That might learn them some manners.

There gone forever on every fish species period

I agree. Some of the young guns have no clue how these fish used to be all over. You could pick any bridge in ocean or atlantic county and pick off a few bass for most months of the year except winter and very early spring. They just don't get it. Island beach with the exception of the sandeel bite in 2011 has been a vast wasteland and it gets worse every year. If fishing doesn't turn around with the new limits John from B&N could be out of business in the next 5 years.
Most guys gravitate toward the pocket because they know how bad the rest of it can be. I still catch because I know the cuts and troughs and re-scout after every storm. To catch more than one now you have to be on your game, not just on your cell phone.