re: How much skill do professional fishermen really have?

Honestly the way and precision that those guys use and interpret those graphs is damn near a art form into itself. That screen is your only little window into the water. Your only seeing a sliver of what's going on. When fishing say deep structure in open water that's all you have is what your seeing on the little screen. It's not as easy as it looks on TV.

I will say that today's technology has made the average angler much better than the past overall. The cream at the top is head over heals better than the rest though. Even at a local level you would be humbled at the skill of how good some of these guys really are. Your not catching just five your trying to catch the biggest five. Even on the worst weather conditions you can possibly think of some guy's will still bring 16-18lbs to the scale.