The thing about this site, is that unlike so many of the 'other' places, this one allows people to have a personality. While there are rules, it doesn't feel like you are in grade school.

This place feels like a group of, get this, friends. It has a feel like a group standing around a campfire; trading stories, swapping tales, and passing a bottle or two. You can relate an event without divulging location, color lure, or secret cure, in full expectation of someone calling B.S., another applauding your adventure, and a few others silently nodding as they recount their own similar exploits.

We've all sat around with friends, listening to the same stories, from the same people, with exaggerations to details growing proportional to the amount of liquid memory being consumed. There's always the guy that likes to brag, or the one who flaunts the nicest gear, or who catches more/less/biggest/smallest/darkest/freshest..., there's usually a guy or two who drinks a little too much and burns a chair then and passes out early, and there are a couple quiet guys just riding the buzz, enjoying the moment. The next morning, we're all back to normal, doing our thing catching fish or hunting something, and having fun.

The nice thing about the interweb, besides sites exclaiming certain individuals as fishing legends... is that if you don't like something, you can choose not to click on it. You can pick another topic, go check e-mail, turn the damn thing off and tinker on the boat... whatever. Nobody has you in a choke hold in the front yard, calling you a bodagget. Granted, singling a person out (especially one with the Ban Wand) is taking it a bit far, but aside from that, people can choose to read/ignore/involve themselves in whatever they please... hell, just look that the KK/Hankster grudge match that’s in about Round 2,793 by now... What if, instead of banning Stick, any 'abnormally critical' or 'calling out' type posts, were simply mod edited to say, "I love kittens"? Win-win?

I'll wrap up with this. My girlfriend NEVER read a post on ifish, or any other site. 'BoyMyspace' has never gotten a rise out of her... BUT... she read Stick posts, usually while sipping a barley beverage.