Quote:
Originally Posted by Sea Dangles
Dr. George, since you seem convinced that my fishing is ego driven due to the fact I catch and kill or target large I made an effort to show you what it feels like to be accused of the same. I am sorry if you missed my point. I would also like to apologize if in fact the title was provided by OTW. No disrespect intended but it did come across as pompous as well as hypocritical based on your ego accusations. Again, my bad.
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Chris, please let's stop this. It distracts from the good things about this board. Other people probably find our behavior venial as well.
Let me try to clarify where I stand. I consider you an excellent fisherman, one of the best on the site, and certainly better than myself. I respect your knowledge, hard work, and well deserved success. How you fish doesn't matter to me. Really. Sauerkraut, one of the guys I fish the most, uses eels whenever conditions allow. That you keep fish doesn't matter to me. Earlybird (a lurker), the other guy I fish with most often, always keeps a fish to eat (and so do I to give to someone on occasion). What you do with your fish doesn't matter to me (I kill plenty practicing C&R). I don't even think you are the kind of guy who keeps fish to parade them around. Absolutely I don't blame you for keeping one to win a VS. I don't blame you for selling them legally, (I don't know that you even do). ProfM is a friend and a commercial fisherman.
I think you have excellent reason to be proud of your success as a fisherman, and no reason to be defensive about that pride. We all need things to support our self esteem, and being good at catching large fish is a healthy (and enviable) thing to excel at. That's probably the goal of most of us here on the site. You are also clearly intelligent, literate, and insightful. I agree, for instance, that both the article title (which was mine...though not the DR bit) and (even worse) at times the tone of the OTW article I wrote came across as pompous, but its intent was to help and encourage people to become better fisherman.....not to build my reputation.
For my part, I love to plug and I like to preach its joys to the uninitiated, who I fear get inundated with the mentality that if you are not soaking bait you are not going to catch anything good, and I love to tease the non-believers (even if they've got a point). I also worry about the pressure on big bass and want to encourage people to release them (primarily so I'll have a better chance to catch one, admittedly). I do not think I am smarter or better than you or anyone else. I've been humbled and ashamed too many times to go there anymore.
So let's try over again and keep it friendly. I'd rather learn from you than fight with you. Merry Christmas, Chris.
George
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