What Every Angler Should Know BEFORE Joining An Online Fishing Club

“$1.00?” I yelled at the filthy man. “Are you serious?”

The man at the bottom of the 3rd hole looked homeless.

His long scraggly hair was matted down under a ratty-looking old Atlanta Braves hat.

From the dirt on his face, it appeared as though he hadn’t showered in ages.

His clothes were mismatched and his pants had more holes than the golf course I was playing on that day…

The old man peered up at me from the bottom of the golf green.

He was holding my golf ball.

You see, my ball had rolled down the back of the par 3 where this bum had apparently passed out…

“If you want your ball back, you’ve got to pay me $1.00,” he said. “Plus, you woke me up. So you can pay me a dollar for that too!” He sounded drunk.

I looked back at my three friends behind me. They just shrugged their shoulders. They were as shocked as I was.

“Listen, dude,” I said a bit perturbed. “That’s my golf ball. Not yours. I’m in the middle of playing a round of golf and that ball you are holding was clearly still in play. I’d really appreciate it if you just give me my ball back and go back to your nap.”

He just stared back at me.

After some awkward silence, he said, “You’ve got to give me $1 for your ball.”

I was about to lose it…

As a broke college kid, the last thing I wanted to do was pay a dollar for my hostage golf ball.

So I decided to take a different route…

“How about this? I’ll call the cops and they can arrest you for trespassing on a golf course. I’ll get my ball back, and you won’t get anything.”

At this point, I was certain he would finally toss my golf ball back to me. But what came out of his mouth floored me even more.

“Fine by me. Call them coppers! This is a public golf course owned by the city… I live in the city, so I have every right to be here. Cops can’t do squat!”

While my buddies finished up the hole, I flagged down one of the workers on the course.

He came over to see what was going on. But he didn’t care. It wasn’t their problem. Apparently homeless men had been camping in, on, and around this golf course for years.

Since it was a public course situated on land owned by the city of Atlanta, there wasn’t much they could do.

The story gets even better…

Shortly after my encounter with the homeless man, I also witnessed the following on the course that day (note: this course cost only $9 – and you could play as many times as you wanted in one day):

• The foursome in front of us had completely taken their shirts off so they could get a tan while playing…
• My buddy Brian hit a ball that landed close to one of the shirtless guys and they tried to fight us…
• We witnessed another guy on the course who had a golf bag with no golf clubs at all… instead, it was loaded with ice and Natural Light beer… he just came to walk the course, get drunk, and pass beers to his buddies (kind of brilliant considering this course was so cheap they couldn’t afford golf carts or bag carts).

All in all, I learned a valuable lesson that day.

You Get What You Pay For…

You see, we played that $9 course because it sounded like one heck of a deal.

I mean, for only $9 you could play as many rounds as you wanted in one day!

What a deal!

Or was it???

A year after this incident, my friend invited me to play a round of golf at the Dunwoody Country Club for the first time.

If you aren’t familiar with the Dunwoody Country Club, let’s just say it was the complete opposite of this rundown public course.

The course was immaculate.

The greens were perfect.

Everyone was friendly.

Men had shirts on.

Girls in beer carts came around and always made sure we had everything we needed from cold beer to gourmet sandwiches.

The clubhouse was filled with successful people.

It was FIRST CLASS all the way.

Plus, NO BUMS stealing your golf balls!!!

That day forever changed how I looked at any type of club.

I finally appreciated why someone would pay more for a better experience… to be around better people… to avoid the riff-raff…

Needless to say, I never went back to that run-down public course again…

Plus, I learned a very important life lesson…

You Get What You Pay For.

I finally understood why nice clubs have higher dues and initiation fees…

Because it attracted better people…

Which ties into principle #2 about online fishing clubs…

 Click here to join the Insider Club

A Fishing Club Is Only As Good As Its Members…

Not only does paying money into a club ensure you are going to get a much better experience, but it also eliminates the vast majority of the people you don’t want to be around.

It’s crazy how even the smallest upfront investment instantly eliminates most of the riff-raff.

Let me give you an example:

If you’ve ever spent any amount of time in a Facebook fishing group or public fishing forum, you know how negative, condescending, and outright vulgar some people can be.

Let’s face it, it’s FREE… you get what you pay for.

Plus, all you need to join a free club is an email and a pulse…

I’m not sure where these trolls come from but what I do know is that they aren’t the type to invest in an online fishing club (thank goodness)!!!

So when we started our invitation-only Salt Strong “Insider” fishing club, we saw this in action first hand…

You see, we priced the club at just $.27 per day!

A price that any serious angler could afford.

I mean, most of us spend 3-4 times more than $.27 per day on coffee alone!

But the most interesting thing happened as the Insider fishing club continued to grow…

All of the Negative Nancy’s, Trash-Talking Tim’s, and Belligerent Barry’s were gone!

We didn’t need anyone on our team to sit at a computer moderating and deleting inappropriate comments because there were NONE!

Instead, we saw the following types of conversations happening in our 27 cents per day online “Insider” fishing club:

• Helpful tips and trends being shared
• Encouragement and priceless advice for newer anglers
• Positivity

Talk about an UPGRADE in the type of fishermen that I want to be around!

Which leads me to the next reason fishermen who pay for an online club see more success than those who don’t…

 Click here to join the Insider Club

You Only Value What You Pay For…

I think you’ll agree that if something is important to you, you’ll spend money on it, right?

Let me share an eye-opening story about a college professor I know.

He had published a 285-page textbook on Economics.

It was every single thing a young college student could ever need to know about economics in America.

I asked the professor how he was able to come up with 285 pages on a single subject (especially economics).

He replied, “I spent a year and a half of my life in the public library researching and curating the best economics books to write this.”

“Huh?” I was confused.

He went on to say, “Everything you could ever want to know about most subjects is found completely for FREE right in your local library… sad thing is that very few people go to the library anymore because they don’t value anything that is for free.”

Wow.

I started reflecting on how true this was in my own life…

In every scenario, I valued what I paid for and gave little value to what I received for FREE…

With one exception… when someone who knew more than me gave me advice or a shortcut…

Which leads me to…

 Click here to join the Insider Club

The Network Effect

What is the Network Effect?

A network effect is when the value of a product or service increases according to the number of others using it.

With a platform like UBER, the entire network is improved with more users (because more users result in more demand for additional drivers which means it becomes easier than ever to get an UBER ride in pretty much every city in America).

With a platform such as Instagram, the entire network is improved as more people join. There is more engagement, more of your favorite interests to follow, and more friends made.

Similarly, with an online fishing club, the network effect can clearly be seen as more anglers join:

• More anglers result in more fishing reports
• More anglers result in more help in your area
• More anglers result in more new fishing friends
• More anglers result in more experts joining the network
• More anglers result in a bigger network for you to find new fishing spots!

With now over 14,000 active Salt Strong Insider club members, I can say the network effect is stronger than ever!

Countless full-time guides have joined to share their knowledge (and to continue learning)…

Families are experiencing more tight lines with help from the community on exactly where to fish every trip!

New friendships are being formed through local meet-ups.

And it’s no coincidence that every single one of the top tournament anglers that I’ve interviewed for our podcast has said, “You’re only as good as your network when it comes to consistently catching fish.”

Plus, our education-first club continues to gain more power (and more education/shortcuts) as it grows!

 Click here to join the Insider Club

Conclusion

I hope this sums up everything you might have been wondering about online fishing clubs.

As you’ve probably already experienced in life, you get what you pay for when it comes to anything from fishing to joining a club.

And if you’ve made it this far, we’d like to invite you to join us (and 14,000 other saltwater fishing fanatics) in our private Insider fishing club.

Here are the top 3 reasons most anglers join the Salt Strong Insider online fishing club:

1. To save time by receiving weekly shortcuts, tips, unbiased reviews, and real-time what’s working now tips you can’t find on YouTube (along with a detailed video on where to catch inshore slams every single weekend)
2. To save money with 20% off all tackle (from every major rod, reel, line, lure, and tackle manufacturer)
3. To meet new friends and have a reliable network for finding feeding fish faster than ever before

Hope to see you inside!

 Click here to join the Insider Club