Sifting through the B.S.

If you are a devoted fisherman/woman you probably spend at least some time reading fishing reports or have a subscription to fishing or outdoor magazines. Every week in the Providence Journal there is a fishing report for the weekend. On the Water Magazine does the same thing on their website, except they cover all of New England as does The Fishermen
I am also a subscriber to On the Water because it covers New England fishing and anyone can write an article and submit it. If published the pay is pretty decent. I used to subscribe to national magazines Outdoor Life, Field and Stream and Sports Afield. I prefer OTW because it covers our local area. Since I am probably never going dove hunting in Texas or marlin fishing in Cabo I don't need to wade through articles I have no interest in to find what I want.
These things being said, just as you are not supposed to believe everything you see on tv, you really can't believe everything you read about fishing. Lets start with weekly fishing reports. First off they are not always reliable. Many of the reports have to be submitted by Thursday prior to the upcoming weekend. Just because fishing was good Wednesday, doesn't mean Saturday it will be the same. The tide will be 4 hours ahead from Wed to Sat. If high tide was at first light on Wednesday and the fish were actively feeding by Saturday high tide will be at 10 am under a bright sun. Chances are good those same fish will not be as active in that location by the weekend.
Obviously weather is a big difference maker when it comes to fishing. If a big noreaster comes in Friday night, it doesn't matter what the fishing pattern was before, that front will change everything. On the other hand if the weather line up and the tides line up it can be possible for the fishing forecast to be somewhat predictable especially during May or the new moons of June and October. Even more than a weatherman, you can't hold these guys accountable when they try to make an honest prediction. Not only do they have to factor in weather but also tide, time of year, moon phase, location of bait, where the fish may have been at the same time last year, and seasonal movements.

My issue with some of the fishing forecasts is what I consider to be purposeful deception. This is where sifting through the bull is tricky. When writers get info for the reports they call up local tackle shops. The shops supply information to the writer based on customers saying where they will be fishing and coming back to get fish weighed in or telling of success and failure. Also most tackle shop employees are die hard fishermen who go out often enough they themselves are reliable sources of info. Writers also get info from marinas, guide services and deep sea fishing boats.
You have to consider the source when it comes to fishing reports. This year was absolutely the worst year fishing on the Rhode Island coast in the last 20 years. This is no exaggeration. Fishing can be summed up as terrible. There weren't many schoolies this spring. The keepers were way down and this fall has in a word SUCKED. Cape Cod Canal had a very good year, I am not saying there aren't fish around, but if you fish in Rhode Island fishing was way off. This can easily be attributed to a huge lack of bait.
So if fishing is terrible in Rhode Island why do fishing reports say there are fish around? Money. It doesn't do a tackle shop owner in Narragansett to give a bad fishing report. If you don't go down and buy some bait or tackle he is out of business. So of course the owner will give a positive report. These may not be lies, maybe one of there employees got a couple schoolies during the week at Narrow River, maybe a keeper at Hazard Ave. These things may be true, but in previous years you'd have a dozen guys catching a dozen fish at Narrow River, and at Hazard Ave you'd have blitz of peanut bunker that blues, stripers and false albacore would have been feasting at. The other possibility is a fisherman catches a couple fish one night so that is reported, what is not reported is the 4 other nights that he went fishless.
The same can be true of party boats and guide services. Why on earth would a deep sea fishing boat say that there customers aren't catching anywhere near the number of fish they did two years ago. There is no way way you'd spend $60 a person to hear that. So instead they tell of the big one that was caught that week , or the one day in the last seven where customers actually had success. It is all about money. I am not even suggesting its about greed, people need to make a living, unfortunately the fishing was so bad in Rhode Island this summer that most positive fishing reports were more than stretching the truth a little bit.
You also have to weigh in about where the reports come from. Narragansett and Charlestown have many tackle shops. If you want to know about the Narrow River and how its fishing, chances are you will read about it from at least two tackle shops on OTW website, The Fishermen, and ProJo. However, there is one small bait shop in Jamestown and I am not even sure it is still in business. You will never get a fishing report from Jamestown. This spring I had about a week where fish up to keeper size were actively feeding every night in a small cove in Jamestown. They were picky, but I was catching between 8-15 a night. Yet other than the occasional big fish at Beavertail, Jamestown does not exist in fishing reports. This works for me because it keeps my productive spots a little more secret, but it also works for the bait shops in Narragansett that want customers to frequent there store.
The very same thing can be said about Upper Narragansett Bay. In most years the bay is loaded with schoolies at just about every public access point from Bold Point in Providence, to Barrington and Oakland Beach opposite sides of the bay. If the adult menhaden are in, huge stripers will follow them and feast until the big boats wipe out the bait. You rarely get a reliable fishing report about the upper bay. The writers don't have the same relationship with the tackle owners up there. You may hear about a couple of the more well known spots but not because they are the best producing spots, but because they are the ones everyone has heard of. Case in point, Barrington Beach usually has some schoolies during May but it is not nearly as productive as the rocky areas along Barrington.

On the subject of what is believable in fishing articles you also have to remember that bussiness is, well, a business also. Money motivates editors also. They are always looking for a fresh idea. Whether it be a new location or a new technique they are always looking for something fresh. These are articles you can learn a lot from and believe me I have. When I first started saltwater fishing I read everything I could find about it. New magazines, internet articles, back issues with articles of specific locations anything I could find. These articles can be a huge wealth of info.
Still you have to wade through the B.S.. I once read an article about a new way to largemouth bass fish. The author wrote about purposely casting his lure over a tree limb and having the lure bounce up and down into the water until it aggravated a bass into biting. I think many of us have accidentally done this and caught an occasional bass while your line is caught on a branch. I'm not quite sure this is a good approach to an actual technique. First off you would have to be an absolute perfect caster. Secondly, theres no way all your casts are going to be perfect so your going to spend plenty of time retrieving your lure from being hooked in the tree branch in the process spooking the fish. I am not judging this man, if this is a successful way to fish for him, I tip my my rain hat to him. I do not think this is practical for almost the entire rest of the fishing population.
Articles like this run in magazines because they can't write about the same lures and the same places year after year. Be especially careful of articles about new techniques but also remember when someone writes about a fishing location they will not give away there favorite spot. There may be an article about the rocks at the Cliff Walk in Newport but they will not tell you the rock they caught a 40 pounder. I try to use these articles as guidelines. They can be very useful for general locations and public access ( directions) but its still up to us to learn the spot and actually put the time in to find out when it is productive.
Sometimes you can read something written by a many different people, but completely disagree with there assessment based on your own experience. A great example for me is the use of fluorocarbon leaders. If you read what all the experts say, if you use fluorocarbon you will get more hits. For those of you that don't know what fluorocarbon is, its basically a high tech fishing line that has the same refractive index as water making it invisible to the fish. For the last couple years I have used fluorocarbon but my fish percentage has been the same as regular mono line. What's the difference? Well for one, a 50 yard spool of mono leader material is about $6 but fluorocarbon is about $ 27. That's a big difference. I mentioned to one of my fishing buddies last week that I have never seen a difference. He has had the same results. So when my fluorocarbon runs out I will be going back to the $6 mono. For some guys, they swear by fluoro and for them I can't question it works for them. Sometimes you just have to experiment and decide for yourself.
One of the very best sources of info is going to seminars at fishing expos like the Eastern Fishing and Outdoor Expo each Feb. I usuually go on the day that has the most seminars I would be interested in. These seminars are run by experts at what they do. Whether its a fly fishing guide or a shark fishing specialist the people running the seminars usually know way more than the average weekend warrior. Again though you must be cautious. One regular on the seminar circut ( and I won't mention names but many surfcasters know him by his number of books) hasn't seriously striper fished in the last ten years. During the month of May ( the month with the most consistant striper fishing all year) he turkey hunts. Also he is getting older and he certainly is a wealth of knowledge, but by not seriously fishing the last few years he is not up to date on new lures, techniques and patterns in where the fish and there bait are. Although he has caught thousands more fish in his life than I have, I seriously doubt he would outfish many guys anymore, yet he is considered a god in the surfcasting world.
At one point I was very friendly with a part time fishing guide. After a while I realized he wasn't into fishing for fun. All he was about was making money off of it. I certainly have no issues with making a living doing something you love especially fishing. He didn't love fishing, he was writing fishing articles and doing "expert seminars" and trying to run a lure selling bussiness. What bothered me was he never actually went fishing. If you are going to be " an expert" than maybe you should be out there reading the water and going fishing. I think you owe it to the people your speaking too or are reading your articles to actually know what you are talking about.Our friendship grew apart.

Fortunately, it becomes a lot easier to know what is a good article and what is ridiculous with experience. If you are a novice, and you take everything you read as gospel you will get burned once in a while. If you think about it, even if you are an expert fisherman, your still going to have bad days and if you fished the Rhode Island coast this year a bad summer. So if your trying to get into a new type of fishing or any other hobby, read as much as you can and try to figure out what is useful to you. Put what you have learned to use and try to prove or disprove theories.