Why A Fishing Forum

When we started the site we didn't have any plans for resources for the local recreational fisherman other than our captains directory. I am a moderator at a couple of popular industry forums so I know a bit about the time involved, the difficulty in getting them off the ground and the politics of moderating them.

The site, and I, got on well without a forum and I was a frequent contributor, and still visit/recommend The Captain Mel Forum and the Florida Sportsman Forum. They are both well established sites with a great deal of information and long time knowledgable, committed members who are always willing to answer questions and share information.

Everything, for me, was fine until I tried to log in to the Captain Mel forum and found that my IP had been blocked. I tried to figure out what had been my offense as I never received a warning and hadn't done anything that did not abide by the forum guidelines. I had been chastised a couple of months earlier though, for offering free tackle from our sponsors for reports on their forum and didn't know if that had anything to do with it. It seemed like a winner to me, both Mastry's Tackle and Discount Marine were willing to give away free tackle monthly for the best fishing reprot on The Captain Mel Forum.

At any rate, that wasn't looked upon favorably, I didn't have a clue if it was a factor, what else might be and I didn't want to stress it so I just started my own. I figured... I'll show ya. Well, a couple of months passed and I was having a hard time getting friends to post, let alone visitors so I started Jonensing for that local information that I used to find there. I went ahead and entered from a different IP address and PM'd the moderator, CrabbyFiddler, to ask why had I been banned.

He was kind enough to reply that Captain Mel had banned me himself for a link to my site in my signature file. I was very surprised, as there was no mention of such in the forum rules and hadn't been warned, but intimated that I would be happy to be included without the link to my site in from my posts. After all, I had been a taker there much more so than a giver and I just added the link because I could. As a novice fisherman, I learned much more from what I read, and replies to my questions, than others could have from reading any of my contributions.

Well, I gues it wasn't just my signature that was bugging Mel as he banned all links in signature files shortly there after. The action led to a huge fall out among members and many captains were particularly peeved but all the hub bub settled down in a couple of weeks and went back to business as usual.

I did offer to help modify the forum software so that it wouldn't be a personal responsability but that was declined. (Page/permissions can be modified to display a signature based on post counts, reputation, user level, granted individually... etc.)

At any rate, I was back posting on Captain Mel shortly after my request (thanks CrabbyFiddler) and my visits to Florida Sportsman have been uninterupted. Why then, you ask, is there still a forum on this site. It came down to just having spent so much time putting it together that I just didn't want to throw it away. It was a new application to me so skinning/modifying the template flies/pages and rewriting the url's proved to be quite a chore.

There's not a lot going on in our forum these days even after Mastry's and Discount Marine offered the same material sponsorship to our posters. Who knows though, as the site becomes more prominent in search engines and we expand our sponsor base it just might be the place to be. In the interim I'll keep adding the fishing articles, videos and links to resources as I find them, and.... be getting my "fix" on both The Florida Sportsman Forum (West Central Section) and Captain Mel's Forum where I encourage you to join me.