Soon we will simply say "Alexa, or Siri, launch the boat and get me two Walleye for dinner"

Part 1. Sharing and getting to know each other better. 

Hi, last week Jim Baxter and I were talking about how many of our club members have such varied backgrounds and experiences and we don't know much about any of that unless we have taken a road trip or a multi day fishing trip with them. That's one reason I try and move around to different seats at Friday breakfast, to give me a chance to get to know members of our club and for them to know me for better or for worse. I'm glad I've done that, it's been an easy thing to do and has been very rewarding.

Jim and I have talked a little bit about how we might get members to tell us a little or a lot about themselves in an open environment so that we might all be enriched by hearing about some of the journeys, some of the cool things we have seen or done. Many of you have been members for a long time and know quite a lot about each other already but many others of us don't and we would like to hear those stories about you.

We are kicking around a few ideas about how to do this and to make it fun. For myself I'm a bit reluctant to post anything on a blog that people outside of our club might read because they're pretty personal but I've shared some of that already with the people I've fished with. Bill Prater (great write up Bill) opened up about the loss of a good friend last year and shared that with all of us. By doing that he told us a story about himself, growing up, getting older and it touched all of us because we've all been there. More than just "Hi, my names Rick and I live in Fort Collins. Nice to meet all y'all" We could use some of this now that we can't meet together for awhile and even after we can meet what other creative ways can we have fun and share our lives with each other?

Share your ideas.Send your ideas to Jim, or Bill or Doug or me or come up with one that you can surprise all of us with. We want to know more about club members. Write something up with your spare time, long or short, share a photo with a story, tell us something about yourself we don't know. Don't worry about mispellings or "I can't write". You can send these to myself or Bill. Anyone want to be interviewed for a write up? 

OK, I'll share something about myself that some of you already know and use that as a segue into a new product on the market or rather what we call connected products or integration or synergy or (I'm searching for a word I used to know).

Part 2. Sharing a small part of who I am
I'll admit I'm a nerd when it comes to anything that looks cool or a tool that is really slick or a new scientific discovery or invention. I used to know how to use a slide rule (sort of) because it was cool. Heck, I send Tom Miller emails about cool tools (https://kestrelmeters.com/products/kestrel-5000-environmental-meter) that I'm looking at just because I want to know the temp and wind speed when I'm ice fishing. It's just a small part part of who I am and what stitches me together.

I like history, science, archaeology (Speaking of which did you know that the new iPad has a built in LIDAR) if you don't know what LIDAR is I'll be glad to share that with you and the impact it's had on archaeology), gardening, reading, fishing, learning, mechanics, fixing things, optics, movies, the list goes on. I'm a Scanner. (look that quote up on the internet and a book by Barbara Sher).
And, I like to share things that I think others might find interesting. Here in this forum that usually has a connection to fishing in the form of stories, news, pictures, or maybe a Darwin award here and there especially if it's connected to fishing like Norm on the edge of the ice up in Laramie. So today's new product sharing is in Part 3.

Part 3. The new product synergies.
Sometimes it's about using old tools in new ways.
Fishing certainly has come a long way. As a relative rookie I am always impressed by the knowledge gained by years of experience, learning, paying attention and researching that some of our members have gained through the years. With such a large compendium of knowledge who needs a fish finder or a shallow stake anchor system (dual by gosh) to keep us in place or $4500 chart plotters connected to trolling motors that read lake contours to keep us in 20' of water along the shoreline?

I often think I do and who among us hasn't dropped a few coins (or a lot) to get the latest fishing marvel that marketing tells us we need? How many of us have tackle boxes full of stuff we haven't used in years, all things that promised THIS would catch more fish?  We say "I need to clean that tackle box out" but we rarely do because you never know when we might need those secret weapons, those magic bullets that used to catch fish.

So here's something new on the market. Lowrance, ANGLR and Abu Garcia have given us the ability to connect our fishing rod and a chart plotter to capture data. You can read about it here, https://www.lowrance.com/news-videos/anglr-lowrance-and-abu-garcia-announce-successful-collaboration/  Below is the beginning of the announcement.

Tulsa, Okla. — ANGLR, Lowrance® and Abu Garcia®, announce the successful collaboration between the three brands to blend their cutting-edge technologies to create a powerful new way to plan, record and relive fishing adventures – all while using precise data to catch more fish. Giving anglers a previously unavailable level of control, the ANGLR app acts as a bridge between the new Abu Garcia Virtual™ Rod and compatible Lowrance chartplotters/fishfinders. This new functionality lets users privately capture key fishing data with a click of a button – without the need to stop fishing to access navigation displays, logbooks or mobile devices.

With all of the devices getting more and more interconnected I really don't think we are far off from being able to talk into our cell phone and ordering up fresh fish for dinner. We can already beam images from anywhere to our tv's or phones. We can see the fish follow lures and get hooked .We can remote control our boat. We can say we caught those fish can't we?  We're really good fishermen. Look at that catch!

"Hey Siri, beam us up to the moon will you? I want to see how far I can cast across that crater".