Anyone who has been around professional angling or professional anglers even a bit knows that life on tour is not an easy one. No matter how talented you are with a rod and reel, it still takes substantial sacrifices – time away from friends and families, lots of road time, and other indignities – and there’s no guarantee of making more than minimum wage.

And yet to a huge number of fans, perhaps even a majority, it looks like the dream life.

“They get paid to fish?” they ask incredulously. “I’d do that for free.”

It’s easy to be glass-half-full when you’re not the one drinking from it.

There has always been a certain dissatisfaction evident in a large proportion of anglers. It comes with the territory – most of them were used to being the best at home, and now they’re “another guy” who rarely wins. It’s not just a matter of staying on top, but rather just treading water until you get the occasional break. No wonder they seem so unhappy. Lately, however, the level of unhappiness seems to have reached a fever peak. Perhaps it’s the amplification of social media, but it seems to be coming at us from multiple angles at all times. 

And let me put it bluntly: No one wants to hear about how much your job sucks because their job (or at least portions of it) sucks, too, and they’re not fishing for a living.

That doesn’t mean that anglers shouldn’t critique the sport, its institutions, and its direction. On the contrary, I’ve never been a “shut up and dribble” kind of guy about any athlete in any competitive endeavor. The problem, though, is that if you’re negative far more than you’re positive, people are going to start tuning you out. That has the effect of dampening your message and decreasing your fan support.

Sure, there have been athletes whose primary M.O. was anger. It’s probably true of most contact sports, especially those that themselves consist of fighting – boxing, MMA, and so on, and perhaps football, too. Outside of that sphere, the most notable example I can think of is Michael Jordan, who made grievances – petty or otherwise, real or imagined – his motivation for arguably the best career in NBA history. But Jordan had superhuman skills that were breathtaking to watch. He could’ve been the most detestable human ever to walk the earth and we still would’ve been awed and captivated by his efforts. Fishermen, no matter how good they are at skipping a jig or bomb casting a 10XD, will never have that luxury. Unfortunately, they’re more or less replaceable. If anything, that’s the main lesson I’ve taken away from “The Split”: There’s always another talented angler willing to take your place and make less to do it while being thankful for the opportunity.

Again, I’m not arguing that anyone should perpetually hold their tongue or opine that they’re “just happy to be here,” but the constant stream of negativity not only harms anglers’ fan appeal but also tends to harm their on-the-water performance, compounding the career-harming impacts.

You don’t have to act like you’re at Disneyland every day, but if you don’t seem to appreciate the opportunities in front of you more often than not, the decline of the sport will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.