Then, there is the journalist fisho - or more correctly, the fishing journalist...
Usually very good amateur fishos from any walk of life, the poor bastards discover that they have to go fishing throughout every month whether they want to or not because they need to find new material to feed the hungry printing machines by a certain date each month, especially with photographs.
After a 18 months or so, they are struggling to find new material to write after their initial flush of journalistic enthusiasm and so they start dredging out old photos from years ago or start asking people for theirs. It is at about this time that they drop out of regular active participation in fishing chat boards because they can no longer afford to publish anything spontaneously in case they need it for this month's mag - or next month's - or the month after that. Oh, the pressure!
If they use someone else's photo and don't attribute it properly, through their fault or that of others, some holier-than-thou boofhead will make their life a misery by publicly inferring that they are a fraud.
They will occasionally try out the most obscure methods or baits or odd lures just to find something different to write about after two or three years because, let's face it, in September, nearly all of the articles by every journalist are about catching flathead, in Summer, it is about spotties and occasionally whiting, in winter, it is about snapper and bream. There ain't much new under the sun between one year and the next about catching seasonal fish.
In their desperation to find something novel to change the repetitious seasonal pattern, occasionally, they will drift off into topics almost unrelated to fishing, such as reviewing the 4WD that they just bought at "mate's rates" from some opportunistic car dealer. Always favourably, of course.
Sometimes, the articles might be useful - such as if one of them is a doctor in his day job and writes about skin cancer risks and prevention for fishos. Often though, the articles are just page filling dross.
If they are TV journalists, they have to pretend that they just went out for the afternoon, used their favourite lure and the fish attacked ferociously, even though they might have been out three f%#@ing days without a bite. There are prescribed cliches for such fishing journalists to use incessantly. "Smashed it" is one that is often to be heard in relation to a fish taking a bait - oops - I mean, the sponsor's lure.
If they cannot land a fish after three or four days of never aired, increasingly desperate fishing behind the scenes, they pretend that everything is hunky dory by by showing the great scenery, followed by details of how to book a trip to such a bountiful location with Joey or Freddie or Scottie or whoever from Blah-blah-blah Charters.
When lost for something intelligent to say, which happens a lot, they will mouth the old TV fishing journalist's chestnut of "...and that folks, is what it is all about!"
Occasionally, they will conscript their own kids to pretend that they have never been fishing before until this very day, and lo and behold, they have caught this whopper on brand such-and-such lures or reels.
If they start giving regular "What's being caught, where" reports, they will usually engage local bait and tackle shop owners to file a weekly report about their area. Of course, these guys need people to visit the area and buy bait. So rarely, if ever, will there be a report saying that nothing is biting. Usually, the reports have the predictability of gravity. For example, has anyone ever seen a report from the Jumpinpin area that did not give vague reports of bream, whiting and flathead being caught at a number of well known locales?
As they get more fame, some manufacturer of overpriced plastic will sponsor them and forever more, their value as a useful source of fishing information is gone as they will never utter a sentence at a seminar, nor in print, without the name of their sponsor's product being mentioned as the source of all fishing happiness.
As their fame grows, they find that they can no longer choose whom they talk to. They will be accosted in the street by all manner of galoots who they would never ever want to be seen dead with but must adopt a gracious, always interested persona lest they offend their viewing audience and their media masters accordingly.
Then, if their ego really goes to their head, they will emblazon their boat with their name and garish artwork and never ever have any peace when they are fishing because they get followed around by people who either want to steal their special spots or alternatively, just bask in the reflections of their celebrity.
At that stage, they decide that they might as well profit from their celebrity and they start selling merchanise - caps, shirts etc - labelled with some cute slogan and their name - er, I mean, 'brand.'
Usually, however, they end up buying a nondescript tinnie so that they can potter around anonymously in a few hard-to-get-to creeks catching crabs and bream and enjoy just being mug amateur fishos again...
...with bait...
...and an Alvey!
....and they become human again.
Disclaimer: The characterisations depicted in this post are fictitious and solely for entertainment only. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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