Kevin Perkins is one of those anglers who sees both the funny and darker side of life, and there are plenty of funny and dark goings-on in fishing. He’s the Alternative Angler who sees that side of things that most of us miss because we’re too busy going about the serious business of catching fish and often missing the strange, the satirical, and the plain comical along the way.
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the whacky side of fishing life and grab a laugh or a lament along the way.
The Forum
I don’t spend too much of my time starting/replying to /forum threads, I’m usually far too busy writing well-researched, profound, witty, incisive and informative articles. I know, why don’t I submit them to FM then….Ha,ha..!!
But, like a lot of others, I do regularly look in to see what’s going on. I was slightly puzzled by one of Cakey’s recent posts that bemoaned the attitude of some towards carp anglers. It has to be remembered, when posting in the heat of the moment, your head can easily rule your keyboard, just ask Caroline Flint! (Ohh……political satire, whatever next!) Having said that, nothing beats that delicious feeling you get when hitting the ‘send’ button after composing a well crafted, invective laden, diatribe.
Let me digress for a moment (as if you can you stop me) and look at the Forums as a whole. For a start, there are the categories. Are there enough, or are there too many? I realise that we need more than one topic, but, for instance, if you tend to specialise in burbot fishing on the third Tuesday in September, where do you look? Is it a coarse fish, is it a sea fish? Well it’s a bit of both, so where is the Estuarine category then? Although, let’s be honest, burbot should be lumped in with the Unicorn, Loch Ness monster, Steve Spiller’s 2lb river roach, real proof of large black cats and virgins within a 20 mile radius of the Monk section.
As to the categories, we currently have 18 in total, although Cakey’s Charity Auction is a temporary (and well worth doing) feature and poor old Ian Clokes’ News Links will not be included in this, for obvious reasons.
Given that then, we have 16 regular topics. The favourite, by number of posts is General, and probably no real surprise there, given the wide ranging scope of the category. It’s followed by Bait Box, Coarse and Carp, in that order.
Most responded to i.e. overall number of posts, is Bait Box, with an average of nearly 31 posts per listing, although how many of them refer to the original topic and haven’t gone ‘off-piste’ is anyone’s guess! Second is General, third Coarse and forth Carp, so no unexpected change in the running order there. But…..if the prize is for most postings per topic; the clear winner is Events and Fish-Ins with a whopping 82 posts per topic.
All of which proves or disproves absolutely nothing, of course. Of those topics which are species specific, Carp Fishing is no higher than forth, whichever way the figures are spun, but the Barbel topic has a best placing of third. So given their apparent popularity, should other single species be given their own headings, or are carp/barbel the most popular by far, and nothing else deserves it’s own topic?
How about General, is this just too broad a topic, particularly when we have Coarse, which is equally wide ranging catch-all. Then we have Predators, well, the Pike, Perch and Zander boys are well catered for here, you would think, but what if you are spinning for Trout or Salmon? Are you in with the ‘Fly fishing and other game fishing methods’
Fair enough, but what if your ‘Other game fishing method’ is catching coarse fish? How about the bream I caught fair and square with a Mepps spinner….? OK that’s probably a bit left field, but I can see plenty of scope in light lure fishing for chub and perch with rubber grubs and the like in little hidey holes along the banks of a small stream, but is that the same as jerk-baiting from a boat on a 200 acre trout lake, or hurling out half-mackerel baits and clipping up your buzzers?
And, for once, in the Forum context, I feel a bit sorry for carp fisherman. There is a world of difference in setting out to catch a large specimen (named or otherwise) that inhabits a sparsely populated venue, to that of someone chucking out a method feeder on commercial water. Same fish though, so just the one Forum listing then…..?
And as to the content of those Forum postings? Hmmm……I’ve said it before, that there are members whose outputs on the Forums are positively gargantuan, yet their contribution to the site through articles is, well, let’s just say minimal. It is not a little surprising that they seem to have the depth of knowledge to respond to almost every posting, yet seem unwilling to share this knowledge in other ways.
But then maybe not, as there are a few on here who subscribe to the ‘Get your retaliation in first’ school of thought. The mere idea of just how many members they could upset with a 1000 word article is too much to bear.
Maybe the Forum listings would be better as types of fishing, such as Float, Leger, Fly, Spin, with sub-headings for species in those groups. Newbies and Beginners should be amalgamated, Sea Fishing should have boat and shore sub-headings, Gallery and Photography should be combined, Events is OK, along with Match, Venues and Tackle & Bait as single headings, and the necessary evil of Bait Box tagged on the end to make twelve headings in all.
This alone would make it harder for any malcontent to stir up trouble on the B*rb*l section, because he/she would have to post on the Legering/B*rb*l section, along with the Floatfishing/B*rb*l section, and having to make two separate posts is a bit to much like multi-tasking for most of them to be bothered with.
Going back to the analysis, there are currently over 700,000 responses to Forum postings. If we assume a minimum of four words per posting, that would have given us enough words for almost 4000 articles at 750 words apiece. An unrealistic, Utopian ideal no doubt, but wouldn’t that be a far, far, better archive to look back on than the ‘Wot bait is best for xxxx?’ type of posting that occasionally appears, let alone some of the submissions to Bait Box.
It may be too much to ask, but perhaps we should have two buttons at the end of a new Forum message, the first saying ‘Submit’ and the second saying ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ just to get members to think about what they are about to do. Whilst your opinion and someone else’s may be diametrically opposed, it doesn’t mean that either is right or wrong, they are just different. And on a public, open Forum, that needs to be remembered at times…..
