Decline of recreational fishing and other random thoughts.

As some of you may or may not know, I have quite the drive to/from work. I drive approximately 200 miles one way, stay in a hotel for a couple of nights then drive home - almost every week. Which leads to a considerable amount of time by myself in the car with plenty of time to ponder. For instance, since there is almost a certainty that I will encounter automobile traffic - I started to wonder why? Firstly, for every mile of freeway - a considerable number of cars can line up bumper to bumper. Let's see, if a car is 10 feet long and a mile is 5,280 feet - that means 528 cars can line up for each mile of freeway. If they all moved at the same speed, they should all be able to move at a particular speed - let's say 65 miles per hour. So the guy in the front of the line is moving at 65 miles per hour, but the guy behind him is going 64 miles per hour, and the guy behind him is going 63 miles per hour - and so on. That means the 65th car in line is at 0 miles per hour. I think the traffic jams in LA are some form of this thought. At 1/2 mile per hour less per car, the 130th car is at 0, and at 1/4 mile per hour less per car - 260th car is at 0. That's basically a half a mile. Most of you would think....way too much time on my hands. Correctomundo, as Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction. Then another good one - ass gaskets. Who the hell thinks much about those 'keep your butt germ-free while sitting' wastes of paper. Well, I used to find myself almost shitting where I was not supposed to while breaking the perforations along the middle of the gasket. I was relating this to my co-workers one day and lo and behold find out that this de-perforating pre-defecating ceremony is gender specific. I was going to call into the Mark and Brian Show on KLOS and relate this to those guys - but they quit before I got around to it. It's only the men that tear the perforations before placement and finally discovering nirvana. Women are much smarter than that. They just place the gasket on the seat and promptly sit down. The middle just breaks the perforations from the pliable arse applying pressure at the perforations and the middle just floating down below. So I tried this. Well, my arse shape must be different. The middle just stays there and nothing happens. Much akin to running into an invisible wall. There's much more - but fishing....that's what I'm supposed to be writing about. When I first started ocean fishing around 1963, there were lots of choices for public recreational fishing. There were boats and barges all along the coast of southern California. Earlier posts describe the barges from Malibu Pier to Long Beach. Each of these barges and boats were operated by a landing. There was enough public interest for multiple landings in very close proximity to each other. A lot of the old fishermen talk about how good the fishing used to be. I am not so convinced. I still believe there were more days spent fishing than catching. If you look at the numbers of fish caught, no doubt there were more fish caught - both commercially and recreationally than today. But the number of players are vastly different. I don't remember the exact numbers - but I recall looking at the number of fishing licenses bought in California these last few years - versus 40 or 50 years ago. They are about half. So what is it that chased the fishermen off? In all likelihood a variety of factors. Increases in oil prices resulting in fishing fare increases, vast increases in recreational choices and lots of other reasons, I am sure all contributed. In 1963, an overnight fishing trip would cost around $14. I don't know about diesel fuel - but a gallon of regular at the Texaco or Atlantic Richfield around the corner was around $0.31 so I would think diesel was considerably less. Matter of fact, I remember seeing gas at a Lerner station for twenty some-odd cents. Well the highway diesel is now just under $4 at 3.90/gal. I do not know the exact price of diesel in 1965 - but, in a little less than 50 years the price of diesel goes from around ten cents to 3.90 per gallon. Astonishing. So the price of an overnight fishing trip goes from $14 to $100+. Fishing for most folks just is not that exciting. No wonder the sales of fishing licenses are half of what they were. On the other hand, with less fishing pressure - are the fish populations on the increase? Add all the protection and environmental concerns and you would really think the biomass of fish would be nothing short of incredible. Perhaps the commercial and recreational fishing pressure had been so heavy for so long, that it will take lots of time to recover. So at some point in time in the future, the fishing will become what some of us 'old-timers' would call....'the old days'. Fishing was good in 1965...no doubt. But I have had days quite recently that was also pretty damn good. So maybe the good old days were really in the early 1900's......