As much as I hate to admit it, I no longer should view myself as the “younger” generation.

I turned 30 over the COVID-induced shutdown in the spring of 2020. There is a lot going on in the world that I do not understand, mainly in the form of social media like Tiktok.

Sometimes I think to myself that it is a good thing. However, sometimes I feel like this is hindering. Particularly when it comes to discussing how to get younger people involved in the outdoors and in conservation organizations. While I feel out of touch, I feel some relief in knowing there are more tools out there for curious newcomers than there were for me or anyone in the past.

When I hit the point in my fishing career that it was time to learn how to tie my own knots, my dad had passed away and my grandfather had stopped fishing for the most part, so all I had to go on was a hardcover book on bass fishing. It was alright to be able to see a step-by-step set of pictures on how to do it, but it felt like it was missing something. Now, you can easily watch a video on your phone where you get to see it and hear it.

When it comes to ice fishing, ice thickness is important and thickness reports were pretty much only available at bait shops. Anglers would say how much ice there was when they came to get more bait. If you wanted to travel to fish someplace, you wanted to check out a bait shop nearby to get the ice report. While there, you would try to get information on where the fish hanging out or what lures were hot, leading to you likely buying those lures yourself.

Now, you can go online and see where people have posted the ice thickness for specific bodies of water. This helps you decide before driving to a lake to find out the ice isn’t safe but can hurt the local bait shops who are losing out on people coming in the store and buying things.

Another aspect that I have personally used, is equipment selection. When Otsego Lake froze in 2015, I was going to SUNY Oneonta’s Field Station in Cooperstown for class twice a week, and I wanted to catch a lake trout through the ice. However, I had only moved to Afton in 2014 and only ever fished for panfish through the ice. So, I got online and looked up what stiffness of rod, what line to use, and what lures to use to catch lake trout. I read everything I could about the topic including how to use the different lures recommended.

When I finally went to fish, I dropped my spoon down to the bottom, reeled up a few times and started to jig it when a fish came charging up on the screen of my flasher and annihilated the spoon. I caught my first lake trout through the ice in less than 5 minutes of fishing. A week later, I caught another while jigging. If I hadn’t done my research, I wouldn’t have fished where I did or known how to react when a fish showed up on the flasher screen.

With the positive, there always comes the negative. The ability to hide behind a username and screen, many people are excessively rude and nasty online. When a new user posts a relatively simple, harmless question, some people find the need to lash out instead of trying to be welcoming or supportive. This negativity can be overcome by the optimism of some newcomers, but it still can take its toll on them. The good news is that on many of these posts, other will chime in to help the original poster or to point out the poor response as just that.