Dating apps and fishing

In our ever-accelerating world of technology, it may come as no surprise that apps such as Tinder or SnapChat could be yet more tools to help you find fish.

Tinder is a dating game app. That’s right. The original concept of Tinder was to be a game. More than a decade ago, two young men working at a tech company, Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, changed the face of modern dating. Swipe right for yes, hoping to match, (the other person also has to swipe right), and swipe left for no. This playful and addictive feature gave Tinder both its popu­larity and the unfortunate reputation of being a hookup app. Just not the kind of hookups anglers are familiar with.

As time went on, however, something great happened, defying the odds of objectification and the window-shopping mentality of the app. People actually started dating others that they met there. This shift from hookup culture to a widely accepted dating app only encouraged more peo­ple to join, prompting the company to start adding features such as Tinder Gold and user verification.

Finding fish

So how can it help you find fish? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the plethora of men holding fish in their photos. I have no complaints about that, however. This not-so-secret edge is Tinder’s loca­tion feature. It can let you know when you’re nearly a kilometre from someone. Distance is measured as the crow flies, not by road navigation.

Reluctantly, I tried the app myself — and not to poach fishing spots. Soon after downloading, I had to remove a photo I was quite proud of with a beau­tiful brook trout. My DMs were flooded with messages like “Where’d you catch that trout?” “That’s a beautiful trout, where was that?” “What did you catch that trout on, was it caught at...?”

My go-to response? “Lake Nunya.” Nunya business.

More lakes than people

In remote areas such as mine, there are literally more lakes than people. So even within a few kilometres, I felt con­fident that it would be hard to pinpoint let’s say, my spot on a lake, let alone a specific location.

But if you are somewhere like south­ern Ontario, where the tributaries and water sources are fewer and further between, if your distance reads “three kilometres away,” this sleuthing could be possible. I’m not saying I’ve tried, but I have made a joke about it to a match while we were in the same area fishing one day. When you consider the time I spent enjoy­ing fishing, the extra gas money, and my Tinder navigation, we could’ve met on the water. If anyone were to be put off by becoming the object of a scav­enger hunt, it would most certainly be an angler.

Friends over suitors

I admit I’ve met more like-minded angling and hunting friends on Tinder than potential suitors, but it has made meeting people easier when I’m typically solitary in remote places avoiding people.

Anglers won’t be arming themselves with Tinder next to their Livescope on the water any time soon. Well, I guess they could, but I doubt the two will be used with the same goal. Next, they’ll be using technology to build pathways for the fish to meet other fish. Oh, wait...

Originally published in the August 2024 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS

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