My Problem With YouTube Fishing Videos...

[Basser2021]

Can't really go wrong with tactical bassin. When I'm bored I'll watch LOJO who also does hunting stuff now.

[ol'crickety]

Another thing I don't like is when a guy catches two bass and declares that that's a pattern and then he proceeds to lecture into the camera how to catch bass. Two bass aren't a pattern. Two bass don't merit a professorship.

 

Getting published or having a fishing show used to be a meritocracy, but with YouTube, anyone can post anything. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Watch the top notch channels. Note what they do well. And then emulate them. Don't just strap a GoPro to your chest and think you're good to go as if you're a pro meriting our attention.    

[OkobojiEagle]

9 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

 because you can doesn't mean you should. 

 

A favorite saying of mine... but I'm usually referring to women wearing lycra leggings.

[ironbjorn]

Informative, but not a snooze fest. No over the top antics. No music, especially the corny AI sounding type like it's an 80s instructional video for warehouse employment. A good mix of fishing and teaching. 

[Darth-Baiter]

On 12/2/2022 at 5:11 PM, herder said:

As a kayak angler I like NDYakAngler the best.
Low key, just fishing,and no hard pushing products, he just tells you what he's using, no reminders to subscribe.
Plus he's fishing some really beautiful areas up in North Dakota and Minnesota. Makes me envious being here in New Jersey.
One of the comments was he is the Bob Ross of fishing ?
I put them on while working out.

i love this dudes vids.  mainly because i am way over on the  left side of the country and i am facinated by his fisheries/scenery.  what drives me nuts is that dude NEVER wears a PFD.  he has a lot of followers,  LOTS!!.. so you could draw the line that he is an influencer in the sport.  he can really use his power for good and get some holdouts into a PFD.  on the bright-side, he is by far the most gentle and respectful fish releaser ever.  he never tosses them from a great height.  just a quick and easy release.  he influenced the way i let them go as well.  

[ironbjorn]

49 minutes ago, Darth-Baiter said:

i love this dudes vids.  mainly because i am way over on the  left side of the country and i am facinated by his fisheries/scenery.  what drives me nuts is that dude NEVER wears a PFD.  he has a lot of followers,  LOTS!!.. so you could draw the line that he is an influencer in the sport.  he can really use his power for good and get some holdouts into a PFD.  on the bright-side, he is by far the most gentle and respectful fish releaser ever.  he never tosses them from a great height.  just a quick and easy release.  he influenced the way i let them go as well.  

He sometimes gets out of the yak and stands right up. He fishes shallow water. You'll hardly see it touch his waist. I wouldn't wear one in water like that either, even as an example to potential bonehead followers who should know better (not here to babysit yer life!).

[ol'crickety]

56 minutes ago, Darth-Baiter said:

i love this dudes vids.  mainly because i am way over on the  left side of the country and i am facinated by his fisheries/scenery.  what drives me nuts is that dude NEVER wears a PFD.  he has a lot of followers,  LOTS!!.. so you could draw the line that he is an influencer in the sport.  he can really use his power for good and get some holdouts into a PFD.  on the bright-side, he is by far the most gentle and respectful fish releaser ever.  he never tosses them from a great height.  just a quick and easy release.  he influenced the way i let them go as well.  

 

I like gentle releases too. I've stopped watching videos when a bass gets chucked into the water. 

[Darth-Baiter]

5 hours ago, ironbjorn said:

He sometimes gets out of the yak and stands right up. He fishes shallow water. You'll hardly see it touch his waist. I wouldn't wear one in water like that either, even as an example to potential bonehead followers who should know better (not here to babysit yer life!).

okay.  

[txchaser]

On the peeve side, it's frustrating to watch a five minute video that's really a bullet point or two. Video is a great format to add nuance and detail, and even some what not to do. 

[jhoffman]

9 hours ago, txchaser said:

On the peeve side, it's frustrating to watch a five minute video that's really a bullet point or two. Video is a great format to add nuance and detail, and even some what not to do. 

 

Thats what shorts are made for, doesnt seem like fishing/hunting has caught on yet.

[Glenn]

2 hours ago, jhoffman said:

doesnt seem like fishing/hunting has caught on yet.

Speaking for myself, I tried these with a resounding failure.  Nobody wanted to watch them.  I think the format is better suited for TikTok instead of YouTube.

[jhoffman]

3 minutes ago, Glenn said:

Speaking for myself, I tried these with a resounding failure.  Nobody wanted to watch them.  I think the format is better suited for TikTok instead of YouTube.

I absolutely hate creating shorts content. I do "ok" with it but theres no real rhyme or reason to what performs like full length video. You can sort of pick up on keywords in your title or hash tags but thats the best you can hope for at the moment. No good thumbnails, it pretty much ignores you in search. Its like rolling the dice on if it hits the shorts shelf or just falls flat on its face. Thats what makes it aggravating to go through the time to film/edit.

One other part of shorts that makes me mad is unless they are "viral" theyre extremely short lived. You get maybe 6 hours for it to make it or break it, then its never seen again unless someone comes directly to your channel and choses to watch shorts.

Id prefer youtube hang up the shorts side but Im afraid its here to stay.

[Glenn]

^^ nailed it ^^  I won't be investing any more time in creating shorts for all the reasons you just stated.  It's already painful enough to work several weeks on a video only to watch it fail. LOL!

[PhishLI]

24 minutes ago, Glenn said:

I won't be investing any more time in creating shorts

By clicking on the "..." tab one up from the bottom then clicking "description" tab has brought me to channels I would've never found or looked for otherwise.

[Darth-Baiter]

i think i have one single "short" posted.  pretty much, its a fact that only me and my wife have seen it.  hahahha..i put it up just to see how you even post a vid.  

[TnRiver46]

My shorts get way more views than my videos but I think it’s because YouTube pushes shorts like instagram pushes reels 

[Scott F]

I can tell you that videos I won’t watch are those that are shot with a chest mounted GoPro. I can’t stand watching somebody’s hands turn a reel handle. The ultra wide angle lens of a GoPro camera bends the horizon and makes every cast look like it went a mile. You can’t see the lure coming back, the only slightly interesting part is seeing the rod bend. If you want to make videos people will watch, have someone else hold the camera or put it on a mount and point it at the person.

[ol'crickety]

I'm coming to the end of 39 hours, Season 2, and here's what I've observed:

 

The twins, Adam and Sean Konrad, respect their fish. They're also, arguably, the best fishers.

 

The clowns, AP(Bassin') and Taro Murata, threw their fish back into the water.

 

The twins outworked the other teams, driving through the nights to the next river or lake.

 

The twins also worked together. When a fish was hooked, the other brother immediately went for the net. When Adam caught a 37" brown trout, Sean kept reminding him to stay calm and focused.

 

Meanwhile, the clowns were either too high, singing silly songs, or too low, literally sagging and self-pitying.

 

Both AP and Tato had to be reminded to fetch a net for their partners and even then, they bungled that, hooking the nets on lures and rods. 

 

Both AP and Tato appeared to prefer talking to the camera to fishing. 

 

If the twins were talking to the camera, they kept fishing. 

 

My takeaways: Work hard. Stay focused. Respect your quarry. Be a good teammate if you have a partner. 

 

 

[ol'crickety]

A video title that begins "GIANT BASS...!"

 

Then the guy fishes for two hours, dragging the viewer along with the promise of "GIANT BASS," and he catches one three-pounder.

 

Then he finishes by coaching for five minutes about replicating his "GIANT BASS" success.

 

 

It's like having Barney Fife as a free-throw shooting expert who demonstrates his "expertise" by making one of ten free throws, and then turning to the team and saying, "Now, men, when shooting the game winning throw, I want you to learn from my expertise. For starters,....'

[Johnbt]

Captioning. Videos need to have captions. Same with tv shows and movies.

[813basstard]

Don’t like really long videos.

Slow motion shots of getting out of trucks.

Ultra-regional tips. (When fishing water where you can see 32 feet down…)

Mostly, anything instructional…haha

 

When you watch guys actually fish a tournament you’ll get “hell I caught’em on a wacky worm in a color I don’t know what it’s called on line that’s been on the spool since Obama was in office at a spot I’ve never fished after I zero’d twice in practice…”

 

That I can relate too.

[Zcoker]

What I've noticed lately with most of these bass fishing video's on YouTube.....they're simply running out of content. So they resort to a lot of aggravating things mentioned in this post. Call it "fillers" or whatever, the actual "points" of the videos are becoming smaller and smaller with large portions of content either about driving to the fishing spot or preaching about other stuff like the weather or the new mancave or boat. I've also noticed the click-bait to be colorfully off the charts lately, like to the moon, almost like desperation! 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

59 minutes ago, Zcoker said:

What I've noticed lately with most of these bass fishing video's on YouTube.....they're simply running out of content. So they resort to a lot of aggerating things mentioned in this post. Call it "fillers" or whatever, the actual "points" of the videos are becoming smaller and smaller with large portions of content either about driving to the fishing spot or preaching about other stuff like the weather or the new mancave or boat. I've also noticed the click-bait to be colorfully off the charts lately, like to the moon, almost like desperation! 

You observation is 100% correct based on the demands of Adsense, Google, and Youtube.

 

For example a channel like Tactical Bassin pretty much has to upload a video every 48hrs to stay relevant in the algorithms, suggested videos, etc., not to mention once you get several hundred thousand subs, every video you put out will at least get 10-20k views.   

 

Youtube now has all these metrics like how long does the viewer watch, and they put your videos in an algorithm that spits them out for suggestions to people that will watch them, and ultimately get you paid.      

 

Once you notice this, you can't unsee it from your favorite subs.  It's all about content creation.   Non monetized channels obviously don't have this problem.  

 

[KSanford33]

I work from home, so in the downtime I end up watching a lot of YouTube videos, mainly on fishing. I understand the desire to learn different techniques, but I feel that 99% of YouTube videos are focused on techniques and very few on actually finding fish. I feel like there should be a lot more videos focused on finding fish, since that's essentially the first step to catching fish. 

 

For example, one of the channels I watch reasonably frequently is Matt Stefan's channel. I was watching a video on Carolina rigs since it's a technique I want to improve on this season. He said it's one of his favorite offshore structure techniques. That's great, but he should expound on which offshore structures he uses it on. Humps, points, saddles, channels, etc. 

 

 Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I'm definitely more interested in learning how to find fish rather than how to use different techniques.

[Bankc]

I agree. I too wish they showed more footage of them looking for fish.  And I wish they showed why they chose an area, what changes they made to their presentation, and lots of casts and retrieves that didn't involve hooking a fish.  They say you learn more through failures, and I believe you can learn a lot through other people's failures as well.  Sure, they'll talk a lot about that stuff sometimes, but they don't usually show it.  And hypotheticals aren't nearly as informative as examples.  

 

Honestly, I think 98% of instructional YouTube videos aren't meant to serve as learning tools, but rather as entertainment.  And I get that.  A lot of people would rather fish vicariously through someone than go fish themselves.  True instructional videos are boring, and boring videos don't get views.  That's why school was so boring.  But for people who actually want a deep dive into a topic, a long, boring video is what we need.  

 

I would MUCH rather watch a seasoned pro not catch fish for four hours straight to see their process to get on fish than watch 10 minutes of hooksets and fish holding, while guys talk about their sponsors.