Once upon a time in the 80’s, some friends bestowed upon me the designation of “Stat Boy.”
I was good with that term of affection as it was an accurate moniker at the time. Still is, although these days I believe I may have achieved ‘Stat Man’ status. Neither here nor there I would suppose in the grand scheme of things, but I do have some crazy fishing logs.
Being born a baseball fan, stats are just a part of my makeup. An aspect of that innate allegiance is that I also find milestones pretty cool. So, earlier this year I began to get kind of excited as I approached outdoor posting number 1,000 since taking up writing back on April 30, 2002. Well, it turns out that I got so carried away with the kickoff of this new website and its accompanying social media stuff that I wound up blazing right on by posting #999, just recently realizing that I’d missed out on the planned celebratory posting by a substantial margin.
But since this is my project and I can do whatever I want, including patting myself on the back, we’re gonna take a look at some of what has went down over the last 15 plus years with blog posting #1,054 instead.
4/29/02 The catch that prompted me to write a newsletter to family and friends detailing the “Family Fishing Hall of Fame” record book
By The Numbers
5,596 = Days since my first stab at outdoor writing
1,053 = Total postings prior to this recap.
5.31 = Avg. number of days per blog posting (not bad over a 15+ year period)
69 = Avg. number of postings per year over last 15 years
139 = Number of firsthand fishing reports
7-3 = My largest bass caught since sharing my fish stories
99 = Top 5 weekly updates (project began in 2014)
456 = Total bass submitted to the Top 5 project
26 = Anglers who’ve contributed to the Top 5 project
13 = Bigfoot related postings
Special Guest back in the fall of 2011
40 = Most consecutive days with a blog entry (5/1/17 to 6/9/17)
35 = Emiquon related postings, the most of any fishing hole
Never seen anything quite like The Emiquon Preserve
31 = Trapping postings
2 = Number of Justin Bieber photos to appear on the blog
These new fishing logs were one of my April Fool’s jokes, seriously.
2 = Number of April Fool’s Day jokes
4 = Pop/rock song titles borrowed for blog titles (“Déjà Vu”, “Old Days”, “Like A Rock” and “The Sound of Silence”)
5 = MLB players mentioned in a blog title (Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Ichiro Suzuki)
3 = Textspeak samples used in blog titles (TMI, IMHO, IA LMB PB)
9 = Legendary lure postings
Legendary Lures, the good, old Emiquon Special and the Gapen Fishie
Along the way I have somehow managed to reference Snow White, margaritas, Bocephus, roadkill, Freddie Patek and chicken pox in blog postings. I have also paraphrased Navin R. Johnson, created an outdoor version of “The 12 Days of Christmas”, gave my blog to Bigfoot, wrote a fishing tackle editorial utilizing Hall & Oates song titles and have used the words paraskevidekatriaphobia, chalupa, sewage and exposed bottoms in blog titles. Not to mention thousands of pictures and well over a quarter million words.
Yep, I’m actually kind of proud of this stuff. Whod’ve thunk that a whim to share some fish stories via email with family and friends back in April of 2002 would wind up getting this out of control? Been a fun ride…
I could go on with further stats and nonsense but I will spare you for the time being. After all, I’ve still got a blog in spite of some of that stuff and I certainly look forward to continuing to use it for my amusement and yours if you elect to play along. In fact, I’ve still got close to two hundred postings in various stages of incompletion that have their sights set on eventual public consumption one of these days as time permits.
Anyway, thanks to all who’ve invested a few minutes of your day along the way to read and share your comments. Now go do something productive, like fishing. Talk to you later. Troy