Are We Letting Technology Get In The Way?

Is technology helping or hurting us in our pursuit of fish and game? That is the question I find myself thinking about lately.

I remember the days as a kid when we would blindly wander onto the frozen bay of Green Bay, what seemed like miles from civilization and set up shop. As far as I recall we always caught perch. There was no gps, flashers or lake maps. We had nothing more than some cheap handmade rods made from a block of wood with a portion of an old broken rod glued into a hole. A homemade popup shack, an old wood burning stove and a gas auger. That is all we needed.

Now-a-days the marketing of ice fishing companies have made it seem like we can’t even think about fishing without thousands of dollars of electronics and equipment. Yes, some of it is great. All of it can make fishing easier. But do we need it?

As I think back on my time as a youngster; I think I caught more fish then. Was it because I spend too much time now studying maps, checking weather, and second guessing myself?

As a teenager I remember a spot that I used to fish a ton on a east central Wisconsin lake. How’d I always find that spot. Triangulation. If I drove straight out from this place and stopped once I was even with this distant powerline to one side and almost an equal distance to a light pole over in another direction. Was I ever on the same spot? Probably not. But I seemed to always catch fish. I didn’t have a flasher or camera and I couldn’t see down the hole to sight fish. I just blindly put a jig and a waxworm into the abyss. Tap, tap, tug, and up the fish came.

Today every time I head onto the ice it is a pre-planned like the first 10 plays of a football game. I study maps, weather and try and use knowledge to set up a game plan. I walk out staring at a gps on my phone and once I reach the spot, I have to drill holes right over pre-planned spots or I drill and drop a camera to check what it looks like before setting up. I set up in a fancy flip-over style ice shack that I’ve got tricked out with LED lights, rubber floor mats to line the floor area and heated by a powerful propane heater. It feels warm and cozy inside while I sip coffee from my swivel boat seat and stare at my flasher. Outside my tip-ups either thermal insulated with lights if dark or the new fancy iFish Pro’s that allow you to fight a fish by rod rather than hand to hand like a classic tip-up. (not knocking the iFish gear, those tip-ups are amazing and 10/10 I recommend.)

You get the picture, today things are much easier. Much warmer. Much more fish are caught…. Or are there? Thinking back would I have caught more fish as a younger with all of today’s modern amenities? Or have we over complicated things so much that we don’t just trust our instincts and fish?

So, I ask you, is technology helping or hurting us in our pursuit of fish and game?