YouTube Fishing Fights are Getting Worse

So I made these videos, not only because I'm tired of dealing with the flack myself, but also because I feel I have to stick up for the other fishermen that just love to film their fishing expeditions because they're a Veteran and it helps it with their PTSD, as well as police officers that just love to film their expeditions and do it on the side to make a little money, as well as the charters like Robbie/Lee from Todays Angler and Doug Wegner that's boosting their charter businesses tremendously.

Look, I understand, there's locals out there that hate youtube, that's quite obvious to me after watching the Nick Fish video, but blowing up spots on big water like the Ocean? Come on, I think people sometimes forget that we do live in a free country and free market. If these commercial fishermen are allowed to try to make a living from catching fish on San Francisco bay, well Nick Fish Should be allowed to as well. That's what a free market is all about, no regulation, this is what a lot of Americans wanted and here it is here to stay...

I think the best analogy I could use is how unaccepting baseball fans are to the new way some teams are playing the sport of baseball with statistics and computers, never did anyone think a simple mathematician security guard like Bill James could change the sport of baseball, well guess what, he did. And so has people like Jon B. and 1Rod1Reel from the Googans... Basically, the same thing how we're seeing technology change the sport of baseball, same thing is happening with the sport of fishing and basically a lot of people aren't accepting it..

I've heard plenty of background noise from locals who frown upon the YouTube thing, as well as hearing what they thought of charter fishermen Robbie and Lee coming to Lake St. Clair. They're all worried that they're going to blow up Lake St. Clair, ruin the musky fishing and there won't be any room out for them anymore. I mean can too much publicity bring pressure to lake? Sure, but is it going to ruin the fishing? Man, I was just out on the lake last weekend and it was a complete ghost town, I think I saw one or two boats actually casting for musky. Fact of the matter is, Lake St. Clair is 21 mile lake, there's enough room for everybody and the sport of musky is still pretty small to even consider what these local fishermen are spewing. I mean majority of fishermen don't care to fish for musky because they're so tough to catch anyways, hence the fish of 10,000 casts.

It amazes me how selfish people can be, to think they're more entitled to a natural resource such as water than anyone else in the world. But honestly, lets be honest here, human beings have been fighting wars over natural resources since the beginning of time.

Ya know, it amazes me how many people that have contacted me over the years since I first started recording videos on YouTube. I get it, people want memories, nothing is more enjoyable that a bad ass Jon B fishing video with some awesome b-roll behind it. I mean, hell, if you thought catching a 50 inch musky or 7 pound smallmouth meant bragging rights, imagine doing that in a YouTube video, it's like bragging rights on steroids. I mean lets be honest with ourselves, I've been fishing since I was 5, have fished with a lot of people over the years... Seen how relationships are ruined just because another friend catches a bigger fish, money gets involved and friends start tournament fishing, etc... I think the animosity behind the YouTube thing is very similar, but worse because it's in the public eye. I mean if you run a charter business, well guess what, it's time to start adapting like Robbie and Lee are, as well as Doug Wegner. There's a big discussion about this going on at the top muskie forum right now, some very interesting comments, I also finally decide to jump in and give my input.

Things are always changing folks, did I think one day fishing forums would be dead like LakeStClair.Net and corporate social medial like Facebook Groups would take over? One of the things I hate with the major change on the internet is social media, I honestly don't care for it all that much because it's a bit of a breeding ground for trolls and narcissism without moderation, just turns into a complete cesspool, if you haven't watched the video with Professor Sam Vaknin about the toxicity of social media, be sure to do so.

And I hate to break it to ya... But if you think the job your doing right now is perfectly set in stone, think it's always going to be there, well it's not. As technology removes more jobs from the workforce because of automation, I think people should be doing everything they can to adapt to the new technological era we're about to enter.

So I think people shouldn't be putting all their eggs in one basket and trying to adapt to the workforce, this could mean charters changing from photos to videos, some average fishermen deciding to start youtubing themselves because they can fill that money gap because they only have a part time job, whatever it may be. The wrong thing you should do, is start trying to take our your frustration on fishermen like Jon B. or Robbie and Lee from Todays Angler, because I seen it happen and I know it's happening more often lately.

It's funny, because some of the people that approached me of doing a collaboration or taking them out fishing, it isn't them that's given me flack, but usually their friend, or a friend of a friend. Lol, recently last year I was sort of read the rights of the fishermen's code, basically reminding me when the movie River Runs Through It came out, all the bozos that set out to try fly fishing at their local stream or river. I guess this was sort of a comparison and warning to my own videos, that I guess this fellow angler I recently meant didn't care for, I guess he was scared I was going to influence too many people to pickup a rod and come to Metro park and fish. Strange considering I recently seen a video on Michigan Out of Doors how a charter has said fishing and hunting have really "fallen off" with kids and the newer generation. I keep hearing the common trends from fathers and mothers that they can't pull their kids of their Xbox, tablets and phones. What's shocking to me is how corporate media didn't explain like Joe Rogan did on his podcast, how many average Americans died from Covid-19 just because they were overweight and lacking Vitamin D. Hell, by 2050, the CDC states that 1 in 3 Americans will be diabetic, are we headed towards some type of Wall-E like dystopia?

Ya know, despite the fishermen's code about lieing about keeping your lures and honey holes super secret, for me, it's all about the bigger picture. The amount of bitching I hear about the YouTube thing, yet when you fish in the middle of summer or fall, when it gets super cold out there and least amount of fishermen, at times it's a complete fucking ghost town. So truth be told, are these fishermen pissed off about blowing up a spot or is it just pure jealousy? I think a lot of these fishermen could be harnessing their frustration towards climate change, red tide and the asian carp problem. How about Nestle extracting millions of water from the great lakes without barely paying any tax, I know Bill Burr gave his input on this, lol, love that dude for speaking his mind and standing up for what he believes in! But instead, we're fighting amongst ourselves over petty shit, scapegoating and going after an easy targets, kind of like this perch fishermen did killing a musky and blaming this species for the perch population down. If he had done his research, he'd find out that young perch are starving in the great lakes because an old foreign invasive such as zebra mussels has been eating up the zooplankton. And really, YouTube has also helped expose how some people think and react towards musky, it was always hearsay of walleye/perch fishermen killing musky, well now we know how much it goes on... Especially when this person said, "kill all of them," I suspect after this video was posted, many fishermen are going to have second thoughts about slamming a bat over a musky's head.

Despite all the drama and background noise, I'm gonna just keep doing what I'm doing, when I get off from 5 days of work, I'm going out fishing and filming my expeditions. But I'm gonna forwarn ya, dealing with what I'm talking about has become part of the Norm if you plan on youtubing... Hell, even people from other hobbies such as treasure hunting still have to deal with trolls. Rather interesting story of this cool YouTuber named Michael Oliver that originally started a Lost Jewelry Recovery company out on the beaches of Australia, after taking his business to YouTube, I'm sure its almost tripled or quadrupled his earnings. But with the earnings, come the haters, as Notorious BIG says, "comes with the territory man." Some local who I guess does similar thing Michael Oliver does, took upon himself to say that he's found a ring of a woman that hired him to do a job, this individual claims he found the woman's ring and is threatening Michael that he'll never return. Could be a true story, could be just madeup hogwash to just get under Michael's skin, why? Well, because there's people out there that get off on this sort of thing. The internet truly is a double edge sword, as many success stories it creates, it's creating a cess pool of narcissists and trolls to thrive in as well, welcome to the future, it is here...

I'm going to keep expanding on this article later...

Update: 10-20-21

It amazes me how harmless a sport of fishing is, but still pisses off so many people. I think YouTube could solely create a category called "fishing and karens," just for the amount of women that go out of their way to heckle fishermen both from the shoreline and even from the boat. I'm not sure why this is a common trend, I mean statistically speaking, I think women are more likely to become Vegan than men because I think they're more empathetic towards things like climate change and the environment. And there's nothing wrong with that, I've been outspoken about the amount of men that partake in sport of fishing and hunting that don't address these issues, "denial" is huge. Truth be told, you'll find that majority of human beings leading the way for climate change are women and that's a great thing, we need humanitarians like Barbara Frees.

But I don't think this solely the reason for women heckling fishermen, probably more to this story. I once studied in one of my criminal justice classes some of the groups similar to PITA, that will go around heckling fishermen and actually throwing rocks at them just for fishing. When Professor Barnes brought it up and we talked about this in class, everyone laughed in class... While everyone thought this was a rare thing at the time because social media wasn't around - to actually here people's thoughts as a whole, I think deep down my professor, who worked for Anti-Terrorism unit for Federal Government and was a Detroit police officer, did probably deal with something similar at least a few times in his career as an officer. Going back to the mention of social media, I think people do realize that people's feelings toward fish, caring for the planet, Veganism, which has turned into a sort of religion as Joe Rogan describes it, some even calling it a cult like following now, has gone a little rogue and extreme. Joe Rogan always mentions this toxic tribalism among groups... So I wonder, is social medial and these internet facebook groups kind of making these topics more extreme to people? The one fishermen in this video goes, "are you serious," after the woman acitivist says "you're fishing and trying to kill fish."

It's really hard to pinpoint what's driving people at times, finding their modus operandi or motive of people, lol...  But I'll say this, with all of us on social media these days, really is starting to become easier on analyzing people, that is for sure. I for one, just hope a lot more people start taking some more middle ground on these topics, rather than going extreme and tribalizing. While I think Veganism diet is completely unrealistic, Americans are having a hard time keeping the weight off and going on diets as is, last thing I think they'll be doing is eating all vegetable diet. I, myself, still acknowledge Climate Change and do everything I can to bring the focus to the topic more widely, as well as talking about other things like bringing attention to PFAS, but I am not a Vegan. I think author Lierre Keith, who was once a Vegan, broke it down perfectly how both your body and brain(human brain is nearly 60 percent fat) need the Omega Fats, Vitamin K 2, and other things from meat you can't find in vegetables.

Just so many people trying to force their views on one another, whether it's the locals telling yuppie out-of-staters they shouldn't be allowed to musky fish a lake like St. Clair or the Karens saying they can't fish next to their house, walleye fishermen scapegoating and cracking bat over a musky's head for eating all the walleye and perch.  Truth is, looking at other sports like surfing, shit like this has been going on for quite awhile.

"Ok, I know, this is where you tell me about how locals rule and yuppie insects like me shouldn't be musky fishing Metro and all that. No, that would be a waste of time, we're just going to fuck you up!" - lol Eternal Angler

Again, as I said up above, I'm going to keep expanding on this article later... So as I think up more stuff, find more articles and videos related to this topic, rather interesting, someone just recently did just tag me and my article on Facebook saying that at one point in their state a few years back, a fisherman was killed fighting over a spot. Now is this youtube related? I'm not sure, but first think I'm curious about is whether or not one or both the individuals were Veterans and had some form of PTSD. In this video, I warned how these fights are kind of escalating and eventually at one point things are pop off and turn deadly, knowing human beings. I had told the fishermen to point me to this article so I can dig up more information on this sad event that took place.


1 Response

  1. I typically NEVER comment on blog posts that I randomly stumble upon because I was looking up something else, but after reading all the way through this. I just had to compliment you on having the guts to take your full opinion public like you did. It’s something I believe needs to happen more, especially in the world of fishing and YouTube. I, myself, am a YouTuber and content creator who works with many different fishing brands/companies on all types of projects. It doesn’t matter if the company is hugely successful or if it’s a mom and pop brand just getting started. The topic of YouTube and Social Media and it’s influence on the industry as a whole is one of the most heated debates I’ve ever experienced. I have found that those who are against fishing YouTube channels and fishing influencers are typically people who are simply scared, and refuse to accept that the world is changing. Fishing has been and forever will be one the oldest forms of survival/hobbies/etc that mankind will ever know. So with that said, after seeing firsthand how quickly the world has changed in such a short time and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. People are drastically attempting to hold onto every little bit of simplicity that they possibly can, as well as things that make them happy. That they end up taking extreme measures and acting out in any way they can so they don’t have to accept or face the harsh reality that the world today isn’t the same world it was 20 years ago. I do hope I am wrong and that some day soon things really start to change, but change doesn’t happen without hard work and compromise. So I guess we just have to wait and see what the future holds. Thanks again for the great read and an awesome video that went along with it! You definitely gained a new follower and subscriber, if you like to watch fishing videos as much as you like creating them and are interested in checking out new channels. Would love to have you check mine out and give some feedback on what you see! YouTube - Lifeoholics Fishing Lastly, I would love to hear your opinion on the current situation taking place on YouTube in regards to fishing/hunting/outdoors channels and being demonetized because of showing too much gore, blood, or acts of animal cruelty. Fishing With Norm recently did a video a few weeks ago on the subject and channels like Fishing with Flair, LunkersTV, LOJO have all already been demonetized because of past content.

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