Spoilt for choice.

I had a quick look on Utube over the last few days, not something I'm given to do normally but there you go.

To say I was amazed at the fishing variety of tackle and all manner of techniques etc would be an understatement. And as the title suggests, you new guys to the sport are indeed spoilt for choice.

Oh how I wish that we old dinosaurs had access to such features given that our only access to detailed info was through the pages of the likes of Angling Times. But as they say a picture paints a thousand words.

And to the wags out there, this is not a criticism or a grumpy old man, it's an appreciation of what is available today. But as always armed with all this information it remains as always, it's up to you to find the fish.

......... and then catch them Derek! on all the waters I can go to I know the fish are there, and I can often see them or their sign, but catching them is a different matter! The choice of tackle is indeed bewildering but for the most part affordable enabling anybody to take up fishing! I am often amazed at just how inexpensive some tackle is!

I am not so sure that I would have wanted so much information available at the touch of a button, as the only angler in my family when I started all my information was gleaned from books weeklies friends and just finding out for myself, it was all a big learning curve that thankfully continues today even though I cant get out as often as I used to each time I do there is always something different to fathom out.

There is a phenomenal amount of information out there. The biggest issue is that it isn't of consistent quality. It may take a bit of experience to separate the wheat from the chaff. Then there's the thinly veiled commercials to consider. There can be some good stuff in them, but many beginners can fail to realise that they are being sold to if the thing is done well.

I do watch a lot of the fishing on utube,and while I do pick a few tips up,I mainly watch it for entertainment, I like the way I can can send it to my TV, and watch on a large screen,

Swings and roundabouts from the point of a newbie, in my opinion.

On the one hand yes, you have excellent tutorials and explanations of methods but on the other it can be a bit bewildering to a newcomer and runs the danger of information overload.

A good example of this would be feeder fishing, not too long before I started fishing anglers were starting to make their own from hair curlers and empty film cartridge cases which lead to the commercially available feeders but even then it was very much limited to cage or plastic, open and block end but just look how many variations there are of those nowadays.

If you can stay focused and just look at what you want to do it's fine but that's a bit like walking into a tackle shop and telling yourself you won't buy anything more than what you went in for

I take most fishing videos with a pinch of Salt as many are just pure advertising for companies pushing their new expensive kit. There is just an overload of information to confuse a beginner. Thank Gosh for forums like this to help them.
There are a couple i follow TAF for the entertainment is one. Steven Devereux as he seems to find old Programmes from John Wilson and Jack Hargreaves. The other one is Mark Erdwin for the small river fishing. Which is my main interest?
Am not into the latest new fangled guarantee fish catcher rigs as for the last 45 odd years I've used simple straight forward rigs and they have worked for me so why change.

My main information comes from books, you know those paper things that are covered in text and pictures that came before the interweb. I have around 100 covering all sorts of fishing ranging from the 18th century to date

The wealth of information has been a great leveler as literally everyone has access to all the information now so even a newcomer can become quite clued up in a short amount of time.

Whether this is good or bad I am not sure. I quite miss the days when you had to make a bit of effort to find out things for yourself.