Quote from: crash on July 06, 2009, 07:38:39 PM

NCKA is truly at a crossroads.  What happens next is important.

No its not Bro.  The reports thing has been a long time coming and everyone that should be seeing them and posting them before will continue to do so. Nobody has made any egregious demands of the members here, 10 posts is a minimal commitment compared to the countless hours some guys have put in on the water chasing/learning/understanding their quarry and craft. I think its a fair trade for any insight provided in a fishing report. While you may see that as a major blow to newbies and commerce others like myself see it as a step toward preserving what we helped build.....the existing community.

Right.  I did pimp my post count though.

My wife, who is far smarter than I am, suggested that TR's be made available to the general internet surfing public 2 weeks after posting here, thereby solving everyone's problems.

I knew I married her for a reason.

Not sure why you didn't have access before, maybe it just takes a while to update the database after you login. It is all automatic based on groups.

I have also gone through and deleted all accounts with 0 post that have not visited the site this year. That trimmed about 600 members!

Guess I started posting just in time.  Now I just need to come up with a few relevant, pithy, self deprecating, and/or helpful things to say.  Which goes against my less-is-more posting philosophy (which I obviously need to rethink in light of today's events). 

I would have been pretty sad if my account was deleted to be quite honest.  I started reading the boards, specifically the fishing reports, about 2 years ago.  I found the boards from (I think) a link on Humboldt Tuna.  You guys have a great community here, one that I should one day hope to feel accepted into and to feel like a valued contributing member.  If it was not for the fishing reports, there is no way I'd still be here, and I probably would not have demo'ed a kayak 2 weekends ago, and would certainly not be posting today.  It is because of this board, and because of abking's trip reports, that I ended up taking my 4 year old out on a demo kayak (with ulterior motives - now I get a fishing platform). 

I understand the concern about lurkers, but I think you are not going about it in a prudent way.  A bit more background on me - I am a moderator of a forum dedicated to poker, with over 10,000 posts in the last 4 years.  We have the same perceived problem with lurkers out to harm contributors.  Specifically, regular opponents seek to gain an information advantage by reading your strategy posts in order to refine the range of hands that you have when you perform a certain action.  The ways to handle that are to 1) post misinformation, 2) apply game theory so that your play in unexploitable, or 3) charge for the information. 

The point of this digression is this:  This is a public forum.  You make money with adsense, through ad banner sales, through click through referrals, and otherwise.  You need new blood attracted to the sport.  You can't just take your marbles and go inside the clubhouse, hang the "no noobs allowed" sign, and expect new blood/ad revenue/etc.  By keeping the best part of the site hidden from the internet lurker at large, you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

There are other ways to go about limiting the impact of the information - if in fact NCKA postings are having the effect that you think they are, which is not at all certain - that make more sense than a minimum post count requirement, which is easily overcome by all but the laziest of dedicated fishing-spot-honer-in-onners, for example (and by no means exclusive):

- require TRs be intentionally vague about location.  We have all heard the answer to the question about where we caught that fish - "In the water, with a hook, right in the mouth."; or

- take the entire site private and charge a monthly fee.

I predict that this move will harm the growth of the site.  I am actually feeling like you think that I am part of the problem, not part of the solution, because I can no longer read TRs.  I never felt like a drain on the community, aside from some minimal bandwidth, because I never owned a kayak and never dropped in on any of your fishing spots after a TR.  I just like to armchair, and I usually get around to doing whatever it is that I read about.  Even besides me, what of those lurkers that are home bound and lived vicariously through the reports? 

It just seems to me that the information provided here is easily obtained elsewhere, albeit in a far less entertaining format, in print newspapers, other fishing websites, weeklies like WON, the guy at the bait shop, or here as long as the effort is made to make 10 posts that the powers that be deem "worthy".  I'm not even sure that making the TRs hidden based on low postcount is rationally related to the goal of keeping up-to-date fishing information from non-contributors.

I have more to say about this, but I am going to wait a bit and see if I can incorporate those thoughts into responses to this post, thereby getting myself closer to 10 posts and freedom from no-TR-gettin obscurity.  Which makes me feel kind of dirty, but I was provoked.

Hey ladies and gents-

I just bought a used Ocean Kayak peekaboo that I am planning to transform into a father/daughter paddling and fishing machine.  My daughter, just four years old, fell in love with the kayak we demo'd this last weekend.  Especially the plexi-window in the bottom of the boat.  I've been kicking around the idea of getting a kayak to fish from for a couple years and religiously lurk the fishing reports forum here for abking's fish reports and fish pr0n in general.

So, after taking the peekaboo out for a spin on Saturday, as we get back in the pickup, my daughter says "Daddy, I'm so happy now." and my wife's reaction to that, I knew it was my time to strike - I'm getting a kayak.  I took her out again on Sunday and we saw pelicans diving for baitfish.  She asked, "Daddy, can we catch a real fish?"  My reaction can only be summed up thusly:



Then, she reminded me that I have fishing poles in the garage.  I've promised her that yes, indeed we can catch a real fish.

My plans for Peekaboo (which is now the yak's official name):
-  install handles for her to hold on to
-  install a seat for her
-  plug the holes under my can - I'm (AHEM) big boned and the water comes up through the bottom for my sitting displeasure
-  install 2 rod holders.  I've looked at different types and am open to suggestion from someone that has outfit a boat like this for tooling around a lake catching trout with a pre-schooler riding shotgun

It will be a work in progress, eventually with running lights, fish finder, removable work area and other neat stuff.  Also figure that at some point I will want one of the mack pimp daddy boats that I see some of you have and this will become the wife's boat.  All in due time of course since we also have a one year old baby. 

Also, I need suggestions for a waterproof camera.

This is gonna be fun.