Wow. It’s amazing how much was written about an article that most seemed not to have read or gone to the seminar.
The irony is that this thread has probably significantly focused attention on the article and increased sales of OTW. IOW, your attention to this has helped burn those spots. Actually, there are even a couple references to other spots that were not mentioned in the article.
The hypocrisy is that many responders learned of “their spots” by being told, mentored on fishing them or followed seasoned fishermen by “noticing which vehicles were always there”, etc. This article is simply a matter of degree. Is it envy that those that considered themselves the privileged few are no longer as privileged as they wish they were? I hope not.
The reality – Steve wrote of 5 spots from Westport to almost Connecticut. That’s it, just 5 spots. If one of those very public spots is one you’ve been learning all season, you need to broaden your horizons. Fishing the same spot all the time? All season? I sort of feel sorry for anyone truly in that position, but whose fault is it for being a one trick pony?
For those that read the articles or went to the seminars they would have noticed that he also told how to fish these spots – GASP! Except that his first rule, and one repeated is that you need to fish at night for big fish. Is this going to be a problem? I know I run into lots of googans in the summer during daylight, but very few as the weather gets colder, and almost none at night. I rarely even see another fisherman late at night. If a fella shows up for a 3am tide after having walked 20 minutes in soft sand, I’m pretty confident that he’s serious about the sport and, if a newbie, willing to learn and work together. I don’t have a problem with that, and suspect that most here wouldn’t either.
Same thing with the access (which IMO, is the most important issue). Most of the spots have a ton of mixed use parking and/or a bit of a walk. Anything more than a hundred feet of walking and most googans are not interested. That leaves real fishermen. At night they are few and far between. I don’t have a problem with that either.
My point to all of this is that, like all other spots written about, it won’t amount to much of anything. It seems like the only spot burning that creates problems are spot/activity reports like “30 pound bass are being caught at X.” But even then, my experience is that it only affects fishing at X for a couple of weekends, and usually the bite has died then anyway.
That’s my 2 cents, which is probably only worth half that.
