Remembering Fishguys
Once upon a time, there was no PAC. There was no forum or members; Just a few photo galleries of four guys who liked to fish and joke around.
In 2001 I was about to enter my last year of college. I had finally learned to balance the responsibilities of my adult life and with the free time that earned me, I returned to one of my biggest childhood hobbies- fishing. About this time, my friend Don Hoffer and roommate Matt Coll had been fishing the Springton Lake Reservoir in Media once in a while. Sooner or later I tagged along and remembered just how much I loved the outdoors and the challenge of fishing. We started looking for other fishing opportunities in the area, and taking small road trips to the mountains. We fished for trout often in the Wissahickon Creek, Tobyhanna Creek and Lehigh River, and we targeted bass at the good old Springton Resevoir. Somewhere along the line we started taking pictures. By the summer of 2002 we had picked up another regular, Marty Six, as well as a new species to target, Carp. Carp fishing can be a much more social experience than other styles of fishing with all the sitting around talking strategy together and taking turns chumming the water. It became a pretty dominant theme in our lives, especially mine since I was still looking for post college employment…
By the late fall of 2002 I had a desk job and I was fishing less due to the cold weather. This gave me some free time after work. I had taught myself html and a few web design programs for fun, so I decided to put the knowledge and free evenings to use, building an online album with all of our catches. We used mostly disposable cameras back then, so I had to scan all the pictures. I categorized them by date and venue. It really was just for our own enjoyment. Our fishing adventures were mostly about having fun and teasing each other; many of our pictures back then had somebody in the background giving the finger, gape mouthed with laughter. I named the site “Fishes Are My Bitches,” also obviously a joke. After bouncing ideas back and forth with the other guys, I settled on fishguys.org as the domain name. Much of the politics of the internet had yet to materialize at this time, so I had no idea that anyone besides us would ever see it.
Sure, it was all a joke to me, but as the site grew, I started to get emails… a lot of emails. “How did you catch this fish.” I think I have been to that place when I was a kid.” “What did you use for bait.” I felt obligated to answer all of the emails. It started to be a chore, and honestly I was no expert to be giving advice. I certainly fished for most of my life and had my niche, but many of the questions people were asking about were on topics beyond my range. At my job I had created an online forum for students to find potential roommates, and I thought maybe if I directed people’s questions to something like that, they would get an answer from a real expert on the subject, and we both would learn something.
Our first forum was free software, it looked terrible, but people started using it right away. We had ten or fifteen regular posters, all with different backgrounds. It really blew me away. I soon realized that this thing was growing and “Fishes Are My Bitches” was way over the top for something so public. I changed the title to Philadelphia Fish Guys to go with the domain name, and the fact that by now we did most of our fishing within the city limits. I also felt obligated to use Photoshop on our old pictures to remove the fingers…
At some point I even made fishguys.org business cards to give out on the bank. My title was “operations specialist.” That was a joke too, but people I gave the cards to really started joining the forum. Eventually our free forum provider went under and I decided to shell out real money for real professional forum service. I didn’t really have the money to burn, but I added a donation link to the homepage just to see what would happen. With the nicer forum, more people joined- a whole lot more. And people were really generous enough to give money. I was shocked, fishguys.org almost paid for itself! The photo galleries continued to grow as did the forum membership. We had over 500 images, and people were actually meeting each other through fishguys. This was early in the days of meeting people from the internet and still somewhat uncomfortable. It was humbling. I started to feel conflicted about the mission of the site. All of the photos were of me and a few of my friends, with the occasional person we met from the forum. But the forum itself was a community now with over 600 registered users and sometimes 50 different posters in a day. I felt that the focus was unfairly on me. Sure I set it all up, but the real value of the site was in all of the forum participants sharing information and making friends with one another.
A lot had changed on our forum, and also by now much had changed with the original fishguys. Marty had faded from the fishing scene and Donnie was less interested. Conversely, Matt and I had become obsessive fish maniacs, Both chairmen of the Carp Anglers Group, writing articles, being featured in the newspaper, traveling to fish tournaments, even hosting two TV shows. While we had become much more confident carp anglers, our forum now had resident experts in a whole variety of species. After a lot of discussion, Matt and I decided to create the Philadelphia Anglers Club to replace fishguys. We felt a responsibility to let the members shine. After all it’s they who became the heart of fishguys.org. As of February 2008, the old fishguys forum has been closed, replaced by a more powerful version. The fishguys galleries will no longer be updated each season. Instead we have new member galleries on the philadelphiaanglersclub.com site.
Our old forum will be available for viewing for a few months at:
www.websitetoolbox.com/mb/pfishguys
And the original fishguys archive will remain indefinitely at:
www.cookplex.com/fishguys
It’s bittersweet, but I’m looking to the future,
Louis
February 24th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I felt a post I made on the old PAC site summed up my feelings best…
A PAC Accomplishment
I humbly submit this post as a tribute to an organization I know as PAC. Two and a half years ago I became a lurker of this site after reading a “Fishguys” related article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. I’m one of the older members of PAC and with my three kids grown and secure in my career I found myself with the luxury of time.
I decided I wanted to spend my free time fishing. Well, in my wildest dreams I never thought I’d be sucked in hook, line and sinker. I now fish over 150 days of the year. I am a LUCKY man!
When I first started lurking I did not know what a noodle rod was or the difference between braided line, mono and fluorocarbon. I had no clue that the mighty flathead or the unique mirror carp existed. I was totally confused by terms and words like boilies, bait needle, hair rig, method mix, bite alarms, sods, SEB’s , etc……………. Stripers can be caught by the Art Museum? No way. What the heck is pre-baiting? You actually feed the fish before you catch them? Are there really websites devoted to the flow rate, river height and water temperature of the place that I’m going to fish? I could go on, but you could fill pages with what I did not and do not know about angling.
I may be one of the older PAC members, but when it comes to angling I have a lot to learn. I’ve loved the time spent learning and practicing the tips and techniques so willingly shared by members of PAC.
Well, last Sunday I was float fishing with a 9ft noodle rod using a slip float (I thought they were called bobbers) with a size 8 Owner Mosquito hook tied directly to my mainline which was 6 pound Seaguar Fluorocarbon. Three kernels of sweetcorn were strategically placed on the hook and were fished over a bed of rabbit pellets, maize and cracked corn when my float began to quiver. You use rabbit pellets to catch fish? Fluorowhat? Mosquito Hooks? A size 8 hook for BIG carp?(yea, I know WG, a size 8 is a GIANT hook).
The float twitched again and the fight was on. I had lost two fish previously that morning after extended fights (10 minutes or more) when they came unbuttoned. Unbuttoned? This third fish had me all the way across the river and I was thankful that I had respooled with new line before coming to the Schuykill. (I wonder how I knew that was important?)
After about fifteen minutes I got to see the fish that I was battling and I knew if I was fortunate enough to land her, she would be a PB. What’s a PB? Well, Lady Luck was with me and I had my first thirty pound carp in the net. Boy was I excited. I wish I could have a photo of me with this fish, but alas I was by myself and would have to be satisfied with a poor quality cell phone photo of the fish in the net.
This is the best part of the story and why I am proud to say I’m a member of PAC. I met a young man about a year ago who exemplifies the qualities I feel we as anglers should display. He is knowledgeable, respectful of people and the animals he pursues, humble and a great fishing buddy and a member of PAC. Well, I call this young guy who was probably still asleep early on a Sunday morning to inform him of my good fortune and he actually offers to come down and take a photo of my PB. He did not have time to fish, but he took the time to do me a personal favor. He could not jump in his car and ride down, because the entire area was in lockdown due to the AIDS walk on Sunday, so he hopped on his bike and swiftly rode to take the photo.
I only had the fish out of the water for about 5 seconds to do a quick scale reading and realized that this fish was slightly over 30 pounds. The fish remained in the water until Paul (phillymeez) arrived to take the photo. THANK YOU Paul!
Yes, I reeled in the fish pictured below, but ALL of you had a hand in catching it! Thanks to ALL of you that make this a great resource for the angling community and have provided innumerable thrills for me.
If you’re inclined to respond to this post simply say……
You’re welcome.