Snap to it, take a shot

HAVING been involved in the recreational fishing scene in Tasmania for more than 40 years, I am continually amazed at how easy today’s anglers have it when it comes to information availability before, during and after a fishing trip.

Modern anglers are reaping the rewards of the latest technology.

This doesn’t mean that they catch more fish. It just means that the anglers of today have it much better than those who started out many years ago.

While technology is a good thing, sometimes that “grounding’’ one had as a youngster and learning the “hard way” made us tougher. However, that also meant that quite a few were left sadly lagging behind when the technology either wasn’t available or wasn’t taken up.

I was one of those ones who embraced the changes, because they were quick. I mean, in a 20-year period we have had mobile or smart phones introduced, as well as all sorts of websites where we can go to gain information.

If you had said to me 40 years ago that I could be standing beside a stream and talk into a telephone, I would have laughed in your face. Now, being able to access websites and other data from the side of a river or on a boat is truly an amazing feat.

While information availability has become more widespread, so too has camera functionality. With modern graphic cards and a good 18mp camera, the results are simply amazing.

The fact that we are able to reproduce such quality while fishing and either upload it to a website or even send it to the home computer continues to blow me away.

Top-quality action videos and stills are the norm in today’s reporting, but occasionally we see a video or a photo that will make us

really sit up and take notice.

A camera — or the lack of a camera — can make or break a good fish story.

Again, I am amazed at the photo albums some people carry around on their mobile phones, or can access through offline storage and display all their photos.

One such site I and others use is Postimage.

This is a great offline storage area, with lots of features where you can “tweak’’ shots or manipulate them to whatever you desire.

Unfortunately, it can’t make those fish shots bigger, but there are lots of programs that can. One that can is the ever-popular Photoshop.

This is a professional system that allows you to airbrush photos, tweak the pictures and save the changes.

Having run a popular fishing website for a number of years, we make the most of this technology and share photos and fishing reports from around the state.

However, in saying that, pictures contributed for this column need to be of high quality, and unfortunately mobile phone shots often won’t do the job.

A requirement for this column is that fish pictures for possible inclusion should be at least 1mb (one megabyte), which is something to keep in mind with the trout season opening soon.

Dates to remember

DATES for the coming Tasmanian recreational fishing season are — Saturday, August 3: Opening of most trout waters. Saturday, September 28: Opening of designated rainbow trout waters. Saturday, November 30: Opening of Canal Bay, Great Lake.

Different open seasons and fishing times apply to different waters around the state.

The Inland Fisheries Service does this to ensure the best angling opportunities and provide sustainability of waters.