Fishing Technology - Good or Bad.

Last weeks adventure into fishing did not make this blog, and to precis, we arrived, the fish were spawning, we went home. Deprived of the fishing bug, the next few days were taken up with watching YouTube videos that cover fishing, plus an element of reading about fishing.

It seems that every time I go into my local Co-op these days, there’s a new Angling Times staring at me out of the magazine section. This week’s issue was partly dedicated to modern technology, its use in fishing, and whether it has gone too far.

Those that read this fishing blog are unaware that most blog posts are future chapters in a forthcoming book that describes the journey that Wil (15) and me (72) have taken from roach and rudd on a waggler, through two-to-four-pound carp to the dizzy heights (for us) of nine-and-ten-pound carp, and our hopefully continuing progression thereafter.

The reason I mention this carp journey with regard to the title of this blog about technology is because preceding chapters of the book in progress spell things out precisely.

I was a teenager through the nineteen-sixties. No mobiles, no video games, just fishing with maggots and a float, football in the streets, and pinball if you could find it. Nowadays, I have to be doing something allied to fishing while I fish. I have to be tying a rig, or watching a float on my pole, or waiting for a twitch on the end of my feeder rod. One eye is on the nature around me but the main focus is on bite indication.

Wil is different and grew into being a teenager having had a mobile phone for years and having had computer games and various consoles from a time almost before he could walk. He prefers, maybe will only use, a method of fishing which is to send two method feeders out into the water, set the rods up on a pod with alarms, and to then go onto his mobile phone and to wait for a bleep of an alarm.

We have both watched underwater videos of different rigs and which ones work best, and neither of us can afford the modern tech that can be used to locate and catch carp, but the article in Angling Times did ask the question of whether tech has gone too far.

If you have the money, and many carp anglers seem to have that cash, then you can use technology to its present-day limit, but is it really “fishing?” They can fly a drone in the air looking for where the carp congregate, send a bait boat out with an echo sounder looking for clear ground near the shoal, choose their fishing spot based on the information collated, send the boat out again with groundbait, boilies, and hook bait, and they are almost guaranteed a fish, or a bite at least.

Now, it may look as if this is sour grapes because I can’t afford that technology, but in my head, I honestly believe that if I could, I wouldn’t. I’ve written before about the thrill of watching con-trails of disturbed silt approaching my float, in-close. I’ve written about all the experimentation with method feeders. For me, fishing is about drawing fish into your peg, trying to keep them there, and trying to fool them into taking your bait.

I believe that over six months or so we have slowly progressed from a one-pound carp up to ten pounds because we are learning slowly. We both know that given the money and the tech we could choose a venue with bigger fish and fish it with a boat as described above, but we don’t want to. Our progression through carp weights will improve, I’m sure, by fishing better and better ponds on the fisheries close to us. I am convinced of that and feel that the specimen pond at Hazel Court is truly our next step, but it has taken lots of learning to get to that stage, and not the shortcuts of bait boats and drones.

Maybe, with Wil having been brought up with technology all around him, he’ll go down the bait-boat and drone route. Maybe after I’ve left this planet.