Fishing has always changed with technology. That is not new, and it is not something to be afraid of by default.
There was a time when fly lines made of silk were a luxury. Today you can buy lines that perform better for a fraction of the cost. Rods followed a similar path. What started with older materials moved through fiberglass and eventually into carbon composites that made rods lighter, stronger and more accessible to ordinary anglers. Reels improved. Hooks improved. Lines improved. Boats, sonar, clothing, waders... all of it changed.
Very few anglers would seriously argue that all of that progress was a mistake.
Technology did not ruin fishing. In many ways, it opened fishing up to more people and made the sport better. It gave anglers better tools, better reliability and more freedom to focus on what actually matters... water, timing, patience, instinct and experience.
The problem starts when a tool is no longer used with respect for the sport.
The same kind of technology that can be used to monitor fish stocks and protect a fishery can also be abused by poachers to strip a water of its future. That is the difference that matters. Not just the tool itself, but the motive behind its use.
That same principle applies far beyond fishing. It applies to photography, manufacturing, media and now AI.
AI is one of those things people love to judge in one big lazy sweep. Either it is treated like magic or like fraud. Both reactions miss the point. AI is not automatically honest, and it is not automatically deceptive either. It is a tool. Nothing more. The ethics begin with those who build and deploy the tool, but the final choice still belongs to the user.
That is where context matters.
A large company can use AI to squeeze even more margin out of something that was already built to sell. That is their choice.
But that is not what is happening here.
Fanatic Angler did not come out of a boardroom, a marketing department or a pile of investor money. It came from one person trying to build something real from the ground up... without the kind of budget that bigger brands take for granted.
AI made that possible as a tool. It helps close the gap between having an idea and being able to show it. That is why I use it... because it allows me to create things that would previously have been out of reach without piles of money.
From my perspective, AI can be used to become more productive and more free.
And freedom is what matters to me.
P.S. Yes... these texts are also curated with the help of AI. I use it as a personal assistant... one I can dictate my crooked notes and scattered thoughts to, after which it turns my word salad into something far more readable, without the mess and spelling errors I so easily produce. I never thought I would live to see a real-life Babel fish... but here we are.
FA.