Unreal…
Fishing, like most things in life, has a set of unwritten rules, a list of dos and do nots to ensure that everyone has a good and safe time on the water, or in this case, on the shore. But whatever your hobby is, there is a certain etiquette that comes along with it, and everyone is better off when those rules are respected.
Aside from the basic ones like “don’t litter in and around the water” and “treat the fish in a humane way,” the biggest and I would even dare to say, most obvious, is respect the space of someone else who is already fishing. I mean, do you really have to be a fisherman to know that you can’t cast lines over someone else’s? I don’t think so…
Nevertheless, this video might be one of the most obnoxious and dick-headed moves I’ve seen out on the water. Captured by Finn Hawley, a striped bass angler and guide up in New England, the video was actually filmed last year, but has recently gone viral.
Long story short, Finn is bank fishing for striper, and as soon as he started pulling nice fish out of the water, a boat got right up in his kitchen and started casting in his spot. Just unreal… never seen such a blatant show of disrespect. It goes without saying, but the boat has the whole ocean… the bank angler is obviously relegated to his stretch of shoreline.
He details the incident:
“What would you do in this situation? There was many big schools of feeding fish a few hundred yards offshore. A small school came close enough to shore for me to catch a bass out of it.
This boat from thousands of yards away saw me hook up and ran over the top of the school of feeding fish in front of me, scaring them all away.”
But the worst part? The clown in the boat absolutely knows he’s being an jerk and does it anyway. He just keeps saying “worry about you,” and then finally says “go buy a boat.” My God, what an entitled prick…
This happened to me one time in a lake in public park where I was fishing from the shore and some people rode up in kayaks less than 20 yards away from me. An older woman (let’s call her grandma) was on shore and walked right up next to me, literally I could probably touch her with my rod, and she started taking pictures of them in their kayaks (probably the first time they ever were in one). I was kinda pissed but here’s the difference… they didn’t have a clue. They were clearly from another country, kayaking in 90-degree heat with jeans and jackets on… completely ignorant of the fact that they were destroying any chance of me catching a fish. I honestly don’t know if they even spoke English well enough for me to explain it to them.
This guy? Quite the opposite. And as a number of commenters suggested a 2 or 3 ounce sinker to the hull can remedy that in hurry, but that invites a whole other set of problems…
Props to this guy for keeping his cool.
