Fishing Arizona & The Colorado River

I’ve run this website if you include its first incarnation as a subdomain site on hypermart for over 20 years. In those 20+ years I have met some great people. I’ve also had a lot of people who came to this website telling me how they were going to give me the great opportunity to give them all the inside poop with nothing in return and be thankful for it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not just a large percentage of people scouring websites for everything they can get without giving even an iota of anything in return. It happens in real life too. For much of that time I was very happy to share. I was hoping to build a resource of two-way communications that benefited everybody.

Before I continue I’d like to share an anecdote of something that happened to me in a local fishing store. Not every gleaner is quite this bad, but it encapsulates a lot of my experiences with gleaners.

I used to like to hang out at a local tackle store. I was friends with the owner, and I’d wander in just for the social interaction with people. One day a fellow was in the store complaining that he couldn’t find any bluegill. I had just been out the day before and had noted large numbers of bluegills and red ears hanging out in and around the edge of tule patches (reeds) in about 4 to 5 ft of water. I shared that with the fellow expecting he could go out anywhere on our local waters and look for tulie patches with an edge depth of around 4 to 5 ft. Then he could quickly survey the area for panfish and move on. His tone body language and attitude were a little bit confrontational when he said, “oh where did you see those fish?”

I was little taken aback and caught off guard by his attitude but I responded, “The back of _________ Lake for one, but I ima…” At that point he interrupted, me stepped across in front of me, and grabbed a fishing holes map off the wall. He then rather roughly opened up that map he didn’t own, slammed it down on the counter in front of a customer who was trying to check out, and demanded I show him exactly where those fishes are.

I’ve heard a drill sergeant bark orders, and this was nothing like that. This was the attitude of somebody who thought he was my superior in every way, ordering me to serve him at his leisure or suffer the threat of consequences.

I was having none of that, but I did finish what I started to say. “I imagine if you take the time to check a few places like I described you’ll find some fish you can catch.” Somehow I came off as being the asshole.

Now I want you to understand I’ve been running this website for a long time and I shared a lot of information with people over the years but calling me names and telling me they thought I was here to serve them never benefited a single person. You’re not the first person to visit this website hoping to gain some insight on the local waters, and you are more than welcome to read everything that I’ve posted. Some of it may be useful to you. Some of it may not, but you won’t be the first or second or even 10,000th person to think it’s clever to ask me to hand feed you all the inside poop. If you don’t have anything to share other than trying to convince me how important you are or how much of a bigger bully you are then just accept what I have offered, be thankful, and move on.

If you want more than that then you have to be better than that.