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It's gotten ​to high tech. Kinda like playing a video game where you watch a fish bite your lure on a screen and just reel it up. Boils down to everyone has got lazy, nobody wants to (or don't know how) to go find and catch fish without​ some high-tech devices showing them where to cast and what color bait to throw.

I remember back in the day bringing fish home ,having a few beers and cooking what you caught. Good times but not politically correct today.

Growing up in West Texas near Abilene, no land owner told a kid "no". I had access to thousands of acres of ponds (tanks) and wore the bass out with my 19 cent H&H Spinners and my Zebco 33. Later, moving up to an inner tube and finally a boat. Many a tournament was fished tieing that expensive boat to a tree and climbing into my tube.
Buck Perry's book changed everything. My first memorable structure catch - I followed a flat out, watching my green box, to 20 ft. with an abrupt 2 ft. drop to 22 ft.; I dropped a jig with a white grub and caught a 5 pounder. I acted like Rocky at the top of the steps holding that bass. I was the only boat on the lake. Next was the topo maps ordered from Colorado. Different sections of Texas, cutting and pasting when necessary and coloring in the lake shorelines. I've still got those maps. I don't enjoy casting to a shoreline. Spawning gets in the way of deeper structure fishing.

There was a state-wide contest in the mid to late 70s where the top ten catches each month in Texas got to fish the championship. A 7.4 in May got me in. That was a bag fish in those days. And my first polygraph; nervous as heck. That year the championship was on Cedar Creek. I nearly killed myself crossing the lake near the dam in horrible waves.

Our club qualified for the TABC Top Six State Tournament in 78 - we got third. Bunch of country boys up against the big city boys on Lake Livingston. First time any on us had been on the lake. We were proud of that one.

Was it better back then? There are too many disrespectful jerks in today's fishing community. Sure there were some then, but nothing like now. Sadly, too many of them are in bass clubs. But when you can get past those, some of the greatest people you would want to know, fish.

Like many older bassmasters responding here, I remember ever fish I ever caught and on what bait.