A Future Where No One Measures Length Or Weight?

For years now I have basically ignored the fools, tools, and ignorant on social media and forums. Yes, it irritates me occasionally when someone claims to have caught a 35-plus-pound bass and said fish is actually not even 40-inches and not even 25-pounds. It’s slightly more irritating if said person has a following, or is using that as a springboard to “hashtag” a bunch of brands they somehow are connected to. Slightly more irritating too if tons of people are giving “atta boys” or even throwing out even bigger numbers. Don’t get me started on using equations instead of a scale or tape measure. Facebook public groups are truly outrageous. I quit all of them.

Anyways, it’s been so many years now of seeing this shit that it’s just been immersion therapy at this point and I just don’t let it get to me- for the most part. I had just resigned myself to let them live in their delusion, and I’d live in reality. Everything was going fine until last year- and this year more so- when AI edited and created fish hit the scene. Since then, my engagement and interest in these morons faking fish and lying about their sizes has exploded again. I’m locked into certain groups and anglers and quietly have been lurking and screen-shotting stories and posts and checking them using software. I’ve busted all kinds of anglers, local brands and even national brands. It’s not hard. Just google it.

Since I started, I’ve now gotten pretty good at just being able to eye-ball it. I do make mistakes, and just the other day I thought I found another national brand using AI but I ran it through the software and it was only a three-percent detection- it was a totally real photo. Yet there lies the danger: my automatic reaction has started to be immediately assuming anything that looks really good, or unique, or slightly weird is just fake.

Which brings me to the point. Are we in the age now where measuring fish sizes really, truly doesn’t matter anymore? At this point, anglers I thought were honest I now have very real reason to suspect (or confirmation), and anglers I thought were crooked have checked out repeatedly. I can eye-ball a fish in real life and get you a weight within a few pounds (though recently that’s been tougher as fish have gotten longer, but leaner), but I’ve seen a photo recently of a fish that looked 40-pounds but upon indepth analysis (don’t ask) we determined it wasn’t even 40-inches! And I saw a photo recently of a 48-pound fish that was 100-percent legitimate, and the thing looks 28-pounds at best.

So, if we’re no longer selling fish as recreational anglers, and the online world has made it impossible to determine if the size of a fish is real or not- not just through lip service, but through technological manipulation- does it even matter anymore? I know to some anglers it might personally really matter to measure your fish- but I simply ask at what granularity? Isn’t it enough to say, “oh look this fish is somewhere between my 30 and 35-inch mark on my rod, more towards the top end,” and just say “yeah I was into fish nearly 35-inches” to your buddies, or when you post a photo? That’s totally acceptable by my ethical standards. I do think you should measure your personal best, because that’s important. But if you’ve got a true, 43-pound fish, does it matter if you measure a 33-pound fish? I don’t think so. And we know, the time out of the water is one of, if not THE, most important factor for releasing fish healthy. So length or weight, time is time. And this is why so many anglers have quit measuring, or carrying a boga. But setting that aside completely, if no one cares anymore, how much do you really care if it was 21- or 29-pounds? That’s a huge difference- but does it even actually matter? It’s not a schoolie, it’s not a trophy. It’s just a nice fish “in the 20’s.”

This has me really asking the question if there will come a new era where measuring fish meticulously- scale or tape- is akin to what releasing fish was 70-years ago. No one released fish pre-moratorium (relatively no one), and you were seen as a crazy person if you did. Now, almost everyone releases their fish. As the online hellscape and AI make it impossible to even know what’s real anymore, and with us now knowing how important releasing fish healthy is, will accurate measurements even matter anymore? Or will it just become acceptable to be in a ballpark- not just acceptable, but the rule, not the exception? Or will it be more a threshold- you only are weighing or taping that “one fish”- each season, or just that one fish of all time. That’s where I’m personally at. I carry my boga for a single fish at this point- for the season, yes, but really for my life. Because, though I don’t believe you, I want you to believe me when I finally throw-out that big five-oh, and let the hate rain down in my DMs.

We haven’t tackled this issue on the podcast much yet, but I was just pursuing the old episodes and I stumbled upon our “Wadd vs. Needle” episode, Season 2, Episode 29 and this has been a debate between Toby and I behind the scene recently. Maybe you’ll hear something related to it in the future, so it’s worth a refresh.