Do you know Loadmaster? Do you talk regularly with Surface Tension? How about Jigglestick? Do you find him credible?

If you can answer “yes” to these questions, you’re one of thousands of anglers using gigabytes to increase your jigging bites.

Those names are the online “handles” used by anglers who post questions, comments and advice on one of several popular online fishing forums.

The forums are growing more popular by the month. Rick Paquin of Owatonna, Minn., started fishingminnesota.com in 1998 and after a year was averaging 8,000 visits per month to the site. Last month, the site topped a million visits, Paquin said.

“It tells us the demand is there,” he said.

James Holst, a Red Wing, Minn., fishing guide who owns fishthelake.com and fishtheriver.com, thinks fishing Web sites will replace traditional fishing magazines.

“Why would you buy a magazine that’s six months outdated, that doesn’t offer specific information, when you can hop online and get specific information from that day, and if you can’t find it, you can request it?” Holst said.

His two sites together receive about 8 million page hits per month, he said.

Anglers use forums on the Web sites to post questions and offer advice to other anglers. The sites are free and well-monitored to keep discussions civil.

Forums, which focus on a specific topic or region (such as “Ice Fishing” or “BWCA/Duluth”) are moderated by experienced anglers or fishing guides.

Those who visit the Web sites often say there’s more to the sites than just an exchange of information. In a sense, the online forums are an extension of discussions that happen every time four or five anglers gather in a bait shop.

“It’s a peer group of thousands, is what it is,” Steve Foss, a Superior, Wis., angler who goes by “stfcatfish” online.

“You get such a sense of community,” Holst said.

Sometimes, that community leaves cyberspace and meets in the real world. Anglers arrange outings online, then meet at a specific lake to fish together on a weekend.

Foss and several others recently returned from a weekend of lake trout fishing on Burntside Lake near Ely. Sometimes the forums spawn fishing friendships.

“I’ve fished with about a dozen guys who post and have become a fishing friend of three or four,” Foss said.

Visiting online fishing forums comes with the same potential for problems that any other Web surfing does.

“It can get addicting,” Foss said. “I can look up and realize I’ve been talking to cyber fishing buddies for three hours straight.”

DeLuca wonders sometimes if the sites make fishing too easy.

“The only downside I can think of is that it takes the hard work out of fishing,” he said. “I see guys now that complain that their power auger is too slow.”

For all their popularity, few fishing Web sites are economically viable.

“This is the only thing I do,” said Paquin, of fishingminnesota.com. “Am I making money at it? No. But this is my baby. This is going through if I have to starve.”

Holst, of fishtheriver.com and fishthelake.com, uses the sites as a marketing tool for his guiding business on the Mississippi River and a tackle business.