Just when you’d thought you’d seen everything, along comes Angling Masters, a social networking site for recreational fisherman that also supports the creation of user generated online fishing tournaments.
Angling Masters has the standard features you would expect from a MySpace style social networking platform. Users are given their own page (called a cabin) and can add photos, buddies (friends), maintain a blog and list personal details such as location, memberships etc. The layout is slick. It has a nice, be it somewhat masculine feel to it, but unlike the many MySpace clones out there some one actually thought this one through.
The addition of user generated online fishing tournaments is claimed to be a first and I couldn’t find any other site competing in the space.
The “Buddy Tournament feature” allows users to create and participate in online competitions with their fishing “buddies” located anywhere in North America. The vast differences in rivers, lakes and the many fish species inhabiting them is overcome with an interesting twist. Length conversion tables and a series of algorithms allow fish of one species to be compared to fish of another, no matter where they were caught so all participants compete on a level playing field. 12 species of fish are covered and the back end considers how large each species typically grows in each geographic region and scores fish caught accordingly.
Cheating is overcome with tournaments having options such as requiring a witness for the catch and/or the requirement of participating anglers to use the official Angling Masters Measuring Tape to provide accurate measurements of the fish.
If fishing is your thing there are some great features on this site. The idea of competing in fishing competitions online seems so simple I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before.
