Fish Hunter 07 asked the following good questions. Rather than mix them in with a different topic I'll address them here.

Quote FH 07:

"I've also noticed that since I started posting on PP (March '06 I believe) that the WashingtonLakes board just gets less and less posts and responses as time goes on.

Mike: Have reader reports or website visits gone down for WashingtonLakes.com?

I've also recently thought about something with WashingtonLakes.com that has puzzled me. Why no rivers? It seems that it would be a great way to get a lot of the folks over there on the Northwest Fishing Board to get more actively involved in posting and having a place to post river reports would probably be quite popular, if it got as many posts as lakes do..."

My replies:

This Forum really drops off in the late fall/winter months. That's in large part due to it being a lake fishing forum and there just isn't that much winter lake fishing. In contrast, the main forum (NW Fishing on Piscatorial Pursuits) has more of a year round topic selection. Fall and winter are big for salmon and steelhead.

In addition, for reasons I can't pin down, Wl.com's forum has never been as popular as one would expect considering how active the site is. WL.com has grown steadily at 15-25% per year for the past ten years. We never had more visits and more reports than this past year. To my knowledge the only regional fishing web site that has a larger readership is Piscatorial Pursuits. Our big months (April-Aug) saw us being visited 116-134,000 times per month. That's a lot of visits. Our reports have also exploded with over 2,000 reports this year, way up from last year's 1,400. We can thank Aaron for the new report form and website for that.

I think guys have really come to rely on this site mainly for the reports and (I hope) the articles and depth of information available on our lakes. And, less so on having the site become a "social meeting ground". For example, I don't think PP gets much in the way of river reports outside it's forum - for PP the forum is it's big draw and everything else is secondary. For us it's just the oposite.

As for us doing river reports and information: several years ago I added the saltwater section and reports. Frankly, it has done OK but not great. I added saltwater for selfish reasons - I wanted a place to save my reports and read other's reports. As you can see, after 10 years guys that keep sending reports in every year have built quite a nice online fishing diary. I wanted a place for saltwater. I'm frankly not as interested in rivers, for a number of reasons (something to discuss on a different thread). I have barely enough time and energy to run the lake and saltwater sections, and definately Aaron and I have no time to add rivers. And, I don't think we want to fragment our energy that way. I'd much rather use what energy I have to keep this the premier lake fishing site for Washington (which I think it is).

When we are done with the NEXT upgrade (sometime in early spring) you are going to see some significant changes which will change the way readers interact with WL.com. I think you will begin to see more in the way of user interactions. I don't want to give away too many details but I will say I am excited and looking forward to providing the next update for the readers.

So please be patient and don't worry too much about the slowness of the forum. I for one haven't gone fishing in over a month. Just too many other things going on in my life. But I sure am looking forward to spring and getting back out on some lakes again!

Mike-
I figured the same thing with the fall-winter month drop offs with the reports and forum replies...
Would like to see more people who visit WashingtonLakes.com post on it and I would like to see more WashingtonLakes.com posters get started in the forum.

Mike: Maybe you could write something about the forums in an article or something so more people would read it and then get signed up with the board and increase its popularity....

Mike: Would you mind sending me a PM about the reasons why you wouldn't want to put rivers on WL.com? I'm not arguing I would just like to hear your take that mentioned but didn't expand on...

Thanks.

Way back when the fourm was on the main page, it was way more active. Maybe people are link shy in fear of endless popups?

I'm not aware of pop-ups? I never get any, but maybe my computer is blocking them. I honestly think people don't explore all the site has to offer and just focus on all those reports.

Here's to the future!

Geez! I haven't been fishing in over a month either.

The reason why more people don't click on the forum is because they don't see the link. I know its right there in plan view but most peoples attention is directed to the middle of the page to see the new reports. I bet when people go to the site and see no new reports they just close the browser rather than looking to see if people are talking on the forum. If you had the forum link in red and put a image next to it that said "NEW" more people would look into it. I don't post on here that often because the Internet has a billion more active forums specifically for bass fishing, but when I do post or have a questions specific to the NW this forum is great. I just think more people need to know its here and helpful. When I first started looking at reports on WL I would sometimes want to ask a person a question or make a comment to a report they posted but its just not possible. If more people knew this forum was here 99.9% would use the same screen name they do on the reports and it would be very easy to identify who is who. I use the site for the lake reports, weather reports, Bruce's bassin' articles, the forum and many other things that are great tools for fishing the NW.

I hope this is helpful info from a new user prospective as to why people don't check this firm out. I really think its just because people just don't navigate around the site. A ton of people that post reports have a ton of questions about fishing. Local fishing! This could be the #1 spot to talk about Power bait, crank baits, and catfish bait without a doubt.

Daniel T you must be clarvorant. Watch for the new site coming in the next few months to get some of the very things you mentioned...

Mike-For now, post a little story about the forum in the Fresh Bait section encouraging people to sign up and not just be lurkers..

I cant wait to see!