As I said earlier in this thread and have said on many others on other Angling sites over the past ten years, I was mooching along rather nicely on the Angling internet, freely helping people on fly, coarse and game, trout, salmon, sea-trout, grayling, bleak, barbel and bullhead matters and very often being very much thanked for it - it's how I am, always willing to help a fellow fisher, because I had some very generous people (the great majority of them not rich or posh or packing a big name) help me when I was starting fishing or when I was trying to get past a state of "Stalled Dunce" on getting into a new Angling discipline, had got so far but then couldn't see the wood for the trees.
Then a tiny number of highly insidious, often politically motivated, agent provocateurs appeared, caring not a jot for other members of the forum concerned and what they invariably and inevitably did to it before scurrying off to wield their online machetes elsewhere (wreck sites in some cases, leaving them a mostly abandoned shell by anyone decent or with a little talent) so long as they could lay a blow on just one individual - which, astonishingly, happened to be me. Sorry, not paranoia or a sense of victimhood on my part, but it happened - too many people have seen it, I have many gigabytes of every mind-bogglingly stupid encounter (including this one).
We are fast running out of Anglers who do it purely for love, fellas. Remember this when the time comes, not too far down the line, that the only help or advice you will get with / on an Angling matter will be from someone who wants to flog you something or to join them in a particular, very often non-people-friendly, politicking or ideology-spreading "Cosy Nostra" clique or club.
The more we argue and bicker, the more we bring that grisly state of things on. But then such pointscoring power-players, who in most cases contribute little to Angling as done at the waterside, want that, want it bad - all they want is to run the shop and be the only game and voice in town. Not good for Angling.
The internet has been something of a double-edged sword for Angling and so many other things in our lives, having allowed people to get together and share, but also allowed in those formerly confused and alone in a room or ranting at the world in a bus or pub, often very angry few who only want to bicker, bash and knock. In the past, we could cross the street, jump off the bus, drink elsewhere; now, we can't.
Watch them.
On the other hand, some mornings after a night on the sauce, when I look in the mirror.........................:w
