Hi all.

You may have noticed changes to some of the forums on Vyak.
Admin have tried to make the "Trip Reports" and "Fishing Trips" forums easier for our members to search by creating separate areas for Inshore, Offshore and Fresh water trips and reports.
Due to the massive number of existing posts in these sections, trying to sort them all out would have been a nightmare, so we have archived them instead. You can still read the old posts but all new topics should be posted in the newly created forums. Moving forward, this should make searching for relevant trips and reports much easier and logical.

Also, we have created a new section in the "General kayak fishing forums" for Offshore related kayaking discussion (like we did for the kayak sailing and diving scenes).

We hope the new changes meet with your approval.

Vyak Admin.

P.s. Sorry if anyone lost posts that they were writing during the site maintenance. Ideally the changes would have been done during an off-peak time, alas Admin are time poor.

Just checked it all out ,well done mods

This is a great forum because of the work the administrators do in terms of formats and helping shape the great culture of the discussions. Keep it up and thank you

I should have also mentioned that the catalyst for these changes was FishnDive (Eoin)'s suggestion to create an area for Offshore specific discussions, so thank you Eoin for (nicely) pushing us in the right direction.

Thanks Eoin for the suggestions and input.
And a big thanks to Jeff for making it happen, I was supposed to help out but Jeff jumped in and got it done in a flash.

Whilst I appreciate the idea and the work admin does around here, I'm just not sure how necessary this all is.

I think the Offshore Yak Scene is a good idea though. Not sure about the rest.

It seems to me that there's not that much traffic around here these days to make things that difficult to find.
"Mini reports for the week ending......." seem to be all the rage these days. Are we going to have one for Inshore, Offshore and Freshwater now? There's no generic trip report section anymore.

If members are going to post trips, they need to be posted in the right section. The only trip to be posted since the change is a "Freshwater" trip at Lake Eildon. The only problem with that is that it's been posted in the "Inshore Trips" section. If people were looking for freshwater trips they might not find it.

There's an archived trip for the Southwest this long weekend. Offshore, Inshore and freshwater options have all been discussed dependant on the weather. Where would a trip like this be posted from now on? There's no generic fishing trip section anymore.

Just some of my thoughts.

I'm with rhino on this one. While I appreciate all the effort making this a great site, I think That confusion is going to happen if you have too many categories. I'd leave it to adding an offshore section similar to the yak diving one, and leave the rest as it was. Just my 2 bob

Rhino wrote:Whilst I appreciate the idea and the work admin does around here, I'm just not sure how necessary this all is.

I think the Offshore Yak Scene is a good idea though. Not sure about the rest.

It seems to me that there's not that much traffic around here these days to make things that difficult to find.
"Mini reports for the week ending......." seem to be all the rage these days. Are we going to have one for Inshore, Offshore and Freshwater now? There's no generic trip report section anymore.

If members are going to post trips, they need to be posted in the right section. The only trip to be posted since the change is a "Freshwater" trip at Lake Eildon. The only problem with that is that it's been posted in the "Inshore Trips" section. If people were looking for freshwater trips they might not find it.

There's an archived trip for the Southwest this long weekend. Offshore, Inshore and freshwater options have all been discussed dependant on the weather. Where would a trip like this be posted from now on? There's no generic fishing trip section anymore.

Just some of my thoughts.

The idea arose after a chat I had with a bloke that was heading off to Port Fairy last weekend 'blindly' in a PA after seeing Mav's tuna report. The conversation revealed that he had no safety gear, and couldn't tell the difference between swell and chop or read the forecast properly for the trip and was heading out alone. I like to think that I yak within my capabilities and would hate for someone to head out on the water uniformed as a result of a trip/report I was involved in. I figured that the most common thing we tell people to do is to use the search function, but there will always be those that don't want to/can't. The hope was therefore to put all the info that a newbie wanting to head offshore would need in one place. The most common questions asked seem to be 'what yak is good for offshore', 'what rods/rigging do I need' and what are the extra safety requirements. In the offshore yak section, I thought we could have threads done by make eg Hobie AI thread for the yaks that are generally considered capable offshore craft. Then people who have rigged an AI can link their 'beast' post there rather than posting separate threads. That way all the threads are still in the beast section for someone perusing,but for someone wanting to rig an AI specifically, all the relevant threads are there in one place without having to search for them. With the trips being an in a different 'offshore' section you could modify the disclaimer header to highlight the extra safety gear required to take part in the trips posted in that section, for that reason just inshore/offshore categories would suffice.
Anyway they were just my thoughts.

I'm all for the offshore section but don't see much value in dividing up the trip reports. I never did like the way KFDU splits them up.

Cheers for the feedback guys.

Rest assured, we can undo the changes and merge all the trips and reports back into un-categorised forums again and are happy to do so if that's the way it's preferred.

Rhino wrote:If members are going to post trips, they need to be posted in the right section.

I totally agree. To make the new format work, members have to understand the difference between Inshore/Offshore/Fresh. I knew it would be an issue so to help, I put more info in the forum descriptions (ocean/bays & inlets etc).
It's nothing new though, posts end up in the wrong forums all the time and that's parts of our (admin) job to move them where they ought to be.

Rhino wrote:There's an archived trip for the Southwest this long weekend. Offshore, Inshore and freshwater options have all been discussed dependant on the weather. Where would a trip like this be posted from now on? There's no generic fishing trip section anymore.

That's a good point. I can open up the parent "fishing trips" category so people can posts there too, but I resisted because people tend to post there either out of confusion or laziness. It happens a lot in the classified section and looks rather messy.
Perhaps the trips section should be left as it was and just have the reports section categorised? After all, it's highly unlikely that a trip would include going offshore and inshore or inshore and fresh etc.