In a nutshell, yes, social media has at least hurt fishing.

How many lakes have become unbelievably "hot" when big fish are being caught. I can think of four lakes that have never been the same since they were discovered again.

Amistad was smoking around 2003-5 and we had not only every bass fisherman there but every snow bird filleting 8 pounders at the ramps. Today?
Falcon was destroyed the same way (including by BASS).
Choke was in there too. At one Bass Champs, there were TWO stringers over 44#'s weighed in one day. Now, it is the dead sea.
The latest was Ivie. We all know the story there.

Granted, the lack of water also had an effect on all the lakes but the lakes took a dramatic downturn before the droughts really hurt.

Bass fisherman seem to have to brag on bags and that causes tremendous pressure.

The only lake I know of that you could catch a big bag from consistently and it was kept quiet was lake Gonzales. GBRA let the dam fail and didn't rebuild so it is dry now but that lake was only know by a few, and I mean a handful, of fisherman and it was awesome for a long time. That was the best kept secret for a long time.

High School Fishing didn't help. The combo of social media and HS fishing was devastating to the sport.. Also I personally believe that catch and release hurt as much as it helped. Imagine what giant fish were suspended in deep water while all the boats were going down the bank back in the day. Any of your private pay water has fish keeping rules in most cases where you have to keep a few fish to help the water be better.


Social media changed everything as far as secrets go. There are places we visit now that just 10 yrs ago no one even knew existed. Double edged sword, you find out about places and things you wouldn't have before. Now you just get to share it with EVERYONE.

The biggest issue is the way majority of people behave now. Something changed with that plandemic, we have yet to recover from it either. In most cases people do not treat each other the same anymore. Social Media hasn't helped that either, just more programing and creating a competition that didn't exist in the good ol days.

I'm glad someone blamed HS fishing. Been a couple of pages since I've read about this plague...............

social media has screwed up most everything it has touch in the last 25 years . The whole world has gone out of their mind with this monster. There seems to be no way to stop the lies and [censored] that goes on with it .

I think covi has done more damage to fishing than anything . Before covi fishing was good and mostly you had many less boats on the water . When covi hit it was like everyone figured out that the only safe place to be was on the water , Bass boat and boat sells went thru the roof along with the prices of such when they were already way to high . Boaters on the water doubled if not more . It got insane to be on the water. The owoowaters came from everywhere and knew nothing of editicut on the water. They just bulled there way in and did not care . It got crazy even in the winter when I used to have the lake mostly to my self it was bad .If that was not bad enough then on PK the algea hit and fishing has not come back from that yet and in other lakes we have no runoff as the lakes keep going down more and more every day .Life is good but fishing has taken a beating from where I stand .

Every lake you named all have huge water level fluctuations and the fishing on every one of of them has never been consistent for more than a few years at a time. Plus most are located far enough from major urban areas that they do not get constant pressure 12 months a year.

What started the runs on Falcon and Amistad were the pro circuits publicizing them. Starting in 2006 and 2008 respectively, before "social media" was a thing. In the 70's Lake Guerrero was a hot lake down south, in the 80's it was Falcon, Lake Fork, Toledo Bend and Sam Rayburn. Many years prior to anyone even using the internet, much less "social media". In 1979 there were aprx 1.1 million fishing licenses sold in Texas and the population of the state was 13.8M. In 2022 there were 2.7M licenses sold and the population was 30M.

If you were at Fork from the mid 80's to the mid 90's, you would know that social media had no part in the [censored] show that was there 24/7/365 for many years.

Fss, media, blah......... has not ruined bass fishing. It has ruined Tournament fishing. The 0bvious. FSS shows more than we could have seen before. Now it shows which lakes are better for fss. Ive vs fork.
IVE the better lake for fss vs a dying lake.