Reason 1: No matter how non-competitive you say you are, you want to get there first and you know it. Weekend warriors especially have gut pains up until they see there is no one in their favorite spot.
Reason 2: If a big school or wipers or tuna starts blowing up on the surface a half-mile away, you don't have much time to get on them. Snooze you lose.
Reason 3: A bass boat is no fun unless your jowls flap and you need to wear a hockey mask at full throttle.
Not too long ago, Mr. Merwin posted a blog about the boom in on-line social media, particularly the micro-blogging site Twitter, and how it relates to anglers. John is not a "tweeter," and (at the moment) neither am I, though I have been sucked into the black hole that is Facebook. Twitter basically allows you to track what your friends are doing 24-7, and that can range from drinking a beer on the couch to watching a man get ripped apart by a great white.
We've talked a lot in the past about the dangers of shark fishing. While lots of people have close calls boating threshers and makos, you don't often hear stories that result in hospitalization or bloodshed. I'd say that's because while sharks may have a mouth full of teeth, those teeth don't extend four feet out in front of their heads.
It was pretty cold up here over the weekend, which naturally got me thinking about places I've fished where it was warm. Florida is one such, of course, where you can toss a plastic worm into some likely shoreline bass cover and come face to face with something like this gator.