Instagram is a great platform to help you grow your followers, and it has a very active fishing community. It’s unique because it’s a photo-based platform. It gives you a great opportunity to share your photos and videos with other people in the fishing community.

Once you start to grow your followers, it gets easier to find a dedicated fishing community. We’ll tell you all about hashtags, ways to grow your followers, captions, and a list of Instagram fishing accounts you can follow. By the end, you’ll be able to turn your Instagram fishing account into a fun space to share your stories.

Why Hashtags are Important

On Instagram, hashtags make your content easier for people to find. They could search for fishing-related hashtags, and your account would pop up if you used them. It also helps you organize all of your posts into relevant categories.

On each post, Instagram limits you to 30 hashtags per post. This includes your comments and your captions. If you post a Story, you can only use 10 hashtags. This is why you have to use your hashtags wisely and pick relevant ones. If you don’t, they won’t add value to your post.

12 General Ways of Growing Your Fishing Instagram Account

There are several things you can do to grow your fishing Instagram. If you’re just starting out, you can try a few different ways we outline below and see which one works better for you.

1. Post Creative Content

One of the biggest things you can do is to post creative content. If your content is creative and relatable, people are going to comment and like your posts. Instagram is visual-centric, and there are many different types of posts you can create. For example, you could make short videos showcasing the different fish you catch, take the audience along on your fishing adventures, or take photos. Instagram Stories is a great way to show small snippets of your day. You want to include vivid colors, clear audio, and frame each photograph very well.

2. Utilize Hashtags

Hashtags can be valuable for helping you grow a dedicated audience. They expand your account’s reach while helping you find people that are interested in your topic. For example, say you dedicate your account to fishing. You wouldn’t use #fishing as a hashtag because it’s too broad. Instead, you’d use hashtags like #flyfishing or #fishingCanada2020.

HashtagsForLikes is an excellent tool to help you grow your account’s organic following. If you want to expand your reach further, do a quick search on the trending hashtags and attach them to your post. All of these small things will help more people see your account.

3. Encourage Followers to Create and Share Content

Once you start gaining followers, encourage them to create and share content. Encourage them to use your videos, pictures, and GIFs to create relevant content that they can share with their followers. This tactic can help shift the focus away from any specific brand while letting your followers know you see them. Additionally, it removes some of the pressure from you to create engaging content constantly. Your followers will create a lot for you that you can feature.

4. Work With Influencers

Influencers are people who have large and dedicated followings on Instagram and other social media platforms. If you can get them to feature you on their page, you’ll gain access and exposure to millions of followers all at one time. Another way to get a lot of exposure is for an Influencer to tag you in one of their posts. You can also give them discount coupons or promo codes they can put in the caption of the post. This will direct their followers to your website or Instagram.

5. Advertise

Instagram allows you to advertise, and the advertisements look just like regular posts. The only difference is that it’ll have a banner that says sponsored along the top. You can use video ads, photo ads, slideshow ads, or carousel ads. Try using a mix of these ads to give you great publicity. They’ll also help you analyze your audience’s demographics to maximize your reach.

6. Automate Your Posts

Automating your posts will ensure you have fresh and relevant content available even if you’re not by a computer or your phone. Tailwind allows you to automate Instagram posts, and it gives you hashtag suggestions for every post. SmartSchedule will pick the best times to post your content based on your follower’s engagement levels. In turn, you’ll reach the most people every post.

7. Geotag

Geotagging is letting your followers know where you’re posting from in a specific location. For example, if you have a favorite fishing lake, geotag a picture or post using the lake’s name and location. Encourage your followers to geotag and upload their own posts to your Instagram feed and tag you. The more people that participate, the more people who will see each post and follow you.

8. Engage Your Followers

Your followers want to know that you’re seeing and appreciating their posts. Your content should catch their eye, but each caption on your posts should encourage your followers to engage. Using emojis and open-ended questions are great ways to start a conversation. You could ask your followers how their days went and if they did anything exciting. Make sure you make your followers feel valued and appreciated by answering back.

9. Create a Theme

While having a ton of general followers is great, you really want to narrow it down to a certain niche too. You want to give them something to fall in love with that will encourage them to follow you. Create a theme for your posts like the best fishing spots in Canada, fly fishing, or fishing, or a specific type of fish. If you like certain equipment over the other, tie this into your theme.

10. Create Hashtags

When you get a few followers, create your own hashtags, and encourage your users to attach them to their own posts. Once your followers start using it, ask permission to repost their videos or photos with the hashtag and their handle. This will give them exposure while you gain new audience members at the same time. Remember to get permission to use their content, though, before you post it.

11. Run a Contest

A contest is a great way to spark excitement and get your followers to interact with your account. You could have users post a specific picture with your hashtag and have them tag you in it. If you want to collaborate with other people on Instagram, create a joint giveaway or contest.

12. Use Stories

Instagram Stories are a great way to generate followers and general excitement for your account. Take your followers on short journeys to your favorite fishing spots or let them share in the excitement of pulling in a trophy fish. Use filters, GIFs, music, and polls to see how your audience responds to them.

10 Fishing Specific Way of Growing your Followers

Now that you know 12 ways to grow your Fishing Instagram, we’ll outline several fishing-specific ways to expand your account’s reach. We’ll go over them below.

EXTRA:

In addition to the list we also recommend staying active in your community. Doing so helps you network with other anglers and outdoors influencers. 

You can stay active in many different ways, but here are some tricks that helped us grow out followers from 0 to 10k.

Follow the big (and small) influencers in your market.

Like their posts.

Comment on their posts that you find interesting.

If they follow you, then send them a dm thanking them and maybe asking them what posts they’d like to see!

1. Choose a Fitting Username

In order to get the best results; you want to select a username that directly relates to whatever you want to post. If it’s possible, don’t use numbers as a substitute for letters, periods, or underscores. These things can make your account look messy and unprofessional. It can take a while to find a good name, but you’ll be glad you did when you find a good one.

2. Pick Your Niche

Although fishing in a good niche, it’s extremely broad. You can to pick a niche and stick to it to stay consistent. If you stick to one niche, you’ll be able to grow interested followers who want to know more about your specific topic. It could be fly fishing, fishing tournaments, fishing for a specific type of fish like trout or steelhead, or you could dedicate your account to fishing spots around Canada. Think about your niche and settle on one.

3. Tailor Your Hashtags

Instagram allows you to have hashtags on every post. When people search for these hashtags, they can see your posts and other relevant accounts. Add a good description for each post. To make it look more professional, refrain from posting hashtags on the post itself. Instead, post your hashtags in the comment section. This tactic will hide the mess of hashtags from the average person scrolling by, and it still works well to help grow your following.

4. Shoutouts

Once you hit the 1,000 follower mark on your account, consider doing shoutouts. Basically, you look for accounts that have similar usernames or content and send them a DM. Ask them if you can do a shoutout to your followers for their account, and they’ll return the favor. However, don’t bombard your feed with these posts, or it’ll cause your followers to turn away. Limit it to one every 10 posts or so.

5. Research Popular Niche-Related Hashtags

Do your research and find popular hashtags related to your niche. The more specific your niche is, the more specific your hashtags will be. So, if you routinely fish for trout, you could find a hashtag like #fishingfortrout2020 or #Canadiantroutfishing. Not only will this make you more visible for your audience, but it’ll also help you find similar accounts that you can study to see what works for them and what doesn’t work.

6. Start in a Smaller Niche

The smaller the niche you choose, the fewer competition you’ll have. For example, say you want to have an account dedicated to fly fishing or magnet fishing. Fly fishing is a large niche, but fly fishing for a specific fish or beginner is smaller. If you magnet fish in Canada, this is a relatively small niche. You can make it even smaller by making it location-specific. As your followers grow, you can expand your niche a little.

7. Automate the Busy Work

It’s a labor-intensive project to grow your Instagram account from the ground up, and there is a lot of busywork involved. You can automate your work by using apps like Tailwind to automatically schedule and post your content. There are also hashtag search tools that will quickly and easily pull up trending hashtags in a certain niche that you can copy to your post.

8. Post Fishing-Related Content Consistently

No matter which niche you choose related to the fishing industry, your content should be related to it. You also want to give your followers new content every day to keep them interested and engaged. If you don’t, they may find other fishing accounts and follow them. This is where automating your posts comes in handy because it’s less to try and accomplish during the day.

9. Research the Best Posting Time

Each post should reach as many of your audience members as possible, and this will take research on your part. There’s no universally best time to post to Instagram because everyone’s audiences are unique. Some may be more active in the middle of the afternoon while others may be more active in the morning or evening hours. See which posts get the most engagement and try to post more around this time.

10. Don’t Underestimate Videos

Videos are gaining popularity very quickly on Instagram, and fishing is an excellent niche to make and post them. You could guide your followers on how to tie a specific knot, spool their reel, clean their fish, or get the perfect cast. Start with shorter videos and work your way up to longer ones as your follower count grows.

A List of Fishing Instagram Captions

Which captions work well for an Instagram fishing account? With so many available, it can be a challenge to narrow down the best choices. Additionally, you’ll want to switch these out as the trends change every few days or so.

#fishing #fishinginlife #freshwaterfishing 
#saltwaterfishing #fishingaddict #flyfishing 
#bassfishing #fishingCanada2020 #steelheadfishing 
#trophyfish #fishingtrip #fishinglife 
#fishingdaily #fishinglife #fishinggear 
#fishingguide #fishingrod #fishingtackle 
#fishingreel #fishinggear #fishingapparel

If you’re in Canada, then we’d also recommend using the #canada #ontario #{city} hashtags where {city} is your own city.

Which Type of Instagram Posts Get the Most Action?

There are several Instagram posts that get a lot of action. However, several niches are very easy to capitalize on and use to grow your followers very quickly. We’ve picked out a few you can incorporate into your posts below.

Behind-the-Scenes

People love feeling like you’re including them in something special, and footage behind the scenes is the perfect way to do so. You can showcase your brand’s personality and contribute to your account’s unique story. This could include snapshots or short videos of you getting ready to go out fishing, or you could even post things that didn’t work so well for you.

Tutorials

Advice and tutorials are excellent ways to teach your followers valuable skills that they can use when they go out fishing. Maybe you’re an expert at tying different styles on knots, or you excel at a difficult fishing niche. Perhaps you know how to get the perfect cast for fly fishing. Spread your knowledge with your users by giving them step by step tutorials.

Images with Big Backgrounds

Yes, getting a close shot of your fish can be a great way to document your catch. But, hold the fish up against a backdrop and take a picture. Images that have a lot of background space tend to do better than images that are very close to the subject. Let your viewers see what you see.

Timely Content

If there’s a big fishing tournament coming up, start centering your posts around it. Timely content is huge on Instagram, and people like to feel like you’re in on the newest trends or ideas. Research fishing-related events around your area and capitalize on them when the time comes.

10 Best Fishing Instagram Account Pages to Follow

Although there are thousands of Instagram accounts dedicated to fishing, some stand out more than others. Following them is a great way to gain access to a large pool of people. They include:

• @fishingwithluiza – 285.2k followers
• @petermillerfishing – 67.4k followers
• @orvisflyfishing – 175.1k followers
• @flylords – 199.8k followers
• @realsaltlife – 267.4k followers
• @bucksbassfishing – 202.4k followers
• @yellowdogflyfishing – 60.9k followers
• @patagonia_flyfish – 283k followers
• @yeti – 1.3m followers
• @thedrakemagazine – 38.7k followers