Below is a copy of the transcript of my talk at the 2019 National Recreational Fishing Conference in Hobart, accompanied by some of the screen shots from my PowerPoint presentation: To introduce myself and give you some background: I’ve been a keen recreational angler for over half a century, and for the past 40 years, I’ve made my career and my living from writing about fishing, hosting videos, presenting shows on television and developing and endorsing fishing-related products. It’d be fair to say that rec’ fishing isn’t just a big part of my life… it IS my life! Over that time, I’ve watched recreational fishing change significantly: both here in Australia and right around the world. The technological breakthroughs and mind-boggling advances in tackle and related fields like boating and marine electronics are one obvious area of change, but the very nature of recreational fishing has also shifted. So has its place in society, and that society’s attitudes towards it. When I was a kid, fishing as a sport, a hobby or a pastime — whatever you want to call it — was still very much dominated by men, and the over-riding motivation for going fishing was to catch a bag of fish, bring them home and eat them… simple as that. For lots of casual and not-so casual anglers, this “hunter/gatherer” aspect remains important, and it wasn’t such a long time ago that many of us (myself included) thought nothing of “killing our limit”. Back in the 1950s and early 60s, the average Aussie angler was a working-class bloke in shorts and a blue shearer’s singlet, or a pair of overalls, with a couple of handlines or a Rangoon cane rod and an Alvey reel. He typically carried a hessian bag to hold...