Lately, we’ve heard a lot of pro anglers say, “I wish we could get back to real fishing.”
Or, alternatively, the slightly less rueful, “I’m just going fishing today.”
The part left unsaid is they’ve allowed themselves to be dragged down — or even demoralized — by the recent overwhelming dominance of anglers using forward-facing sonar (FFS). It’s not that you can’t use more “traditional” tactics, it’s just that it’s hard to compete against anglers who rely upon technology.
For the record, I’m still agnostic on whether FFS should be limited in any way. I’ve heard a great many people who I respect argue it is ruining the sport. I’ve been jarred by just how much and how quickly it has enabled previously unknown anglers to climb to the top of the leaderboard. Those factors at least force me to consider it may be detrimental to professional fishing. At the same time, I’m not swayed by many of the arguments that the “antis” have lobbed at FFS.
It leads me to what I consider the most important questions here: What is “fishing?”
And who gets to decide what does and does not fall into that category?
Is it done by majority vote? Does your vote get extra weight if you’ve won a Classic or been around a long time? And if you take the Potter Stewart approach — i.e., “I know what fishing is when I see it” — you’re failing to recognize we all have different forms of vision.
As far as I know there are no stone tablets providing us with guidance on this matter. Beyond any regulations or limitations set by prevailing law, the closest thing we have is the Bassmaster Elite Series rule sheet, which is both vague and hyper-specific. They used to refer to the idea that all fish need to be caught in a conventional and sporting manner. Today, they list specific restrictions (e.g., no umbrella rigs, no live bait, no rods over 10 feet, which is up from the previous limit of 8 feet).
My problem with many of the arguments against FFS is it feels like the advocates of limitation are sometimes throwing crap against the wall and seeing what sticks. For example, they claim it’s bad for viewership, bad for conservation and bad for the tackle industry, without any real data to back that up.
They claim every legitimate sport has limitations of equipment, but they fail to acknowledge, just because that is evident, it doesn’t de facto justify their claim this particular equipment should be limited. I think I’d buy their arguments more if they focused on the main thrust thereof — that it fundamentally alters the sport in a manner which undermines its integrity on the playing field. Prove that point and I’m not sure the others matter.
All sports have gone through these paradigm-changing growing pains. Think about professional football. I love the rocket-fueled nature of the modern passing game, but there was a long period when the forward pass wasn’t legal. I’m sure the grind-it-out-on-the-ground traditionalists of the time were aghast and argued it wasn’t “real football,” but since then it’s become an integral and now-traditional part of the game. Notably, once the forward pass was allowed, that didn’t stop the league from continually refining how it should be viewed or regulated as the sport evolved.
Similarly, the NCAA banned the slam dunk from 1967 to 1976. It was allegedly done so at least partially to take away the advantages adhering to players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Today it’s not only an accepted part of the game, but also a celebrated drawing factor.
I wasn’t around when anglers like Dee Thomas and Dave Gliebe first brought flipping to national attention, but I imagine there were naysayers who didn’t consider it “real fishing.” Someone who was around then correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine the arguments could have gone something like this:
- “That’s not real fishing. They don’t even cast!”
- “They’re getting their lure in front of bass that were previously inaccessible. It’s going to deplete the resource.”
- “Poor tackle store owners. At this rate, they’ll never sell anything other than jigs and pork frogs again.” (Of all of the arguments, this one fell the flattest – pork chunk sales are seriously depressed versus that era.)
I am old enough to remember when bed fishing wasn’t a widely accepted part of the game either. There were a few oddballs like Shaw Grigsby, Fish Fishburne and Guido Hibdon who practiced it, but there were plenty of others who refused to do it. Some of them took a conservation-based stance against it, as in, “They’re removing the fish from their beds when they’re at their most vulnerable, depleting future populations.”
If there had been live coverage of the sport back then, I’m sure the opponents of bed fishing would have said, “It’s just so boring, watching a guy sit over a 4-pounder for two hours, watching his back as he tries to make it bite.” Or, “Where’s the magic and mystery in that? He has the fish spotlighted in its most vulnerable state.”
At a certain point, most pros realized that at certain times if you’re not bed fishing you cannot be competitive. Using that as an argument against it has largely fallen by the wayside. I don’t think that’s because the opponents have given up, but rather because they’ve realized bed fishing can be difficult, and it is definitely not a field-leveler.
To take it even further, live bait has been a part of fishing since the beginning of the sport – it is most assuredly capital-T-traditional-capital-F fishing, but we all seem to collectively agree it shouldn’t be a part of tournament fishing.
Our sport is mainly participatory, with even most ardent fans putting their own fishing above that of those they watch on TV. Many of us watch because we want to learn the 10 best ways to modify a Senko, or how to get a crankbait to dive deepest, or what the latest trends from Japan might be. Anything that stifles that level of creativity is, in my opinion, presumptively a net negative to competitive fishing. I fear an “anti-anything-new” perspective undermines my favorite aspect of what is best about playing and watching the game.
We have a family friend who is a titan of private equity — a take-no-prisoners capitalist. He once told me that every time he acquires a new company, the first guy he fires is the one who complains, “But this is the way we’ve always done it.” I can’t tell if he’s joking. Probably not.
I’m not sure I buy that notion as an absolute — after all, I believe strongly in tradition, heritage and institutional knowledge — to a point. At the same time, I take his point. Change is hard, but sometimes clinging to the way things were and always have been is a crutch rather than a springboard.
Again, I’m willing to listen to arguments FFS should somehow be limited. You may someday convince me of that, but I’m not going to rush to judgment. When the noise of multiple tangential arguments crowds out your most valid points, it makes it hard to separate the signal from the noise. I certainly don’t believe my conception alone of “true fishing” should carry more weight than that of anyone else — and for that reason I’m especially skeptical of anyone with the hubris to tell me they and only they can define exactly what it is.
