The more people involved in the sport , the more organized the opposition gets and the less organized we get.
The newbie hordes bring with them all kinds of problems that create activism against the sport. Lifelong fisherman become aware and give back but easy come easy go fisherman just wreck a place and leave. For years I have seen Smokey carry out a bag of trash every trip left behind by a different bunch every day all week long. If you fish a spot a lot , you're not going to muck it up because its like crapping where you eat but the guys who will come only once or a few times could care less. I see big groups of guys taking up a big stretch of prime fishing areas and all they do is gab all night and leave behind a dozen DD coffee cups and all the packaging for their new lures and snack food.
Anyway , I'm getting off track.
Its inevitable that the spread of information will attract a lot of people. I'm wondering how people more dedicated to the sport can turn the influx of new people that the internet lures into a positive thing. How do you harness the enthusiastic report chasers to in some way do some good to improve the sport or at least prevent the damage they do? Its a question looking for opinions , I certainly don't know the magic answer. Maybe its wishful thinking.
One thing I thought of would be to rig the posts so that every post carries some short conservation minded quote. They have to read through the post to get to the parts that tell them the where , when and how. Or even some mechanism that sticks in some awareness message right smack in the middle of the posts that they can't just jump oever like they could if its at the beginning. Poeple who care could start a library of one or two line beneficial statements that somehow gets pasted into posts on a revolving basis. This library could also include announcements of fisheries meetings or fish friendly techniques etc. I admit its easy to be the idea man when someone else would have to impliment it but sorry , I'm an idea guy not an IT guru.
But some sort of ideas along these lines may boost awareness in the report chasing hordes and matbe restore some balance between the good and bad aspects of the inevitable recruitment that easy access through the internet involves.
Anyway , somehow I'd like to see it lead to some good. Other ideas how to rein the masses for the side of truth justice and Striper Fishing Forever???