Wingdam harassment on Sunday June 22,2003.

Guys this might get a little long so stick with me.I was at PDC the last 3 days for the Iowa GNWC tourney.Alot of good things went on but one major thing has me wondering my I even fish these tourneys.
First for the good.What a nice place to fish.I’ve never been on the river so it was a chore for me to try to fish it.A big thanks goes out to Dave Koonce and Dave Phillips for putting up with me for a few hours on Saturday.Dave Koonce was so helpfull for a rookie on the river.You 2 will always be welcome in my boat anytime.
Now we’ve all had bad things happen to us on the water and maybe have done some stupid stuff to others, not thinking about what were doing.So my partner and I go into Sundays tourney with a good game plan.So we have a wingdam picked out we want to fish that Dave Phillips had a caught a 23″ walleyer on Sat. morning.This wingdam is the first one South of the bridge that goes into PDC from Marquette.This wingdam would be around 200 yards long I guess.There is a boat out by the red channel marker so my partner and I go about half way down the wingdam and drop anchor.As soon as we shut the motor down this guy starts yelling at us.Here is what he says.”You fu$%ing tournament guys think you own the fu$%ing river!If you start to fish I’m going to cut your fu$%ing lines!” Now we were at least 100 feet from this guy and if he wanted to fish down by us I would have not cared if he went by us.So of coure my partner and I are confused by all of this.We are not the type of guys that go out of our way to make people mad,we are NOT this way.So we pull up anchor and drive over to them to see what the heck is going on.I’m mad by this and ask them if they own the wingdam?He says they were there first and it was their wingdam to fish.So I said there is a whole lot of fu$%ing river can’t we work something out?The guy in the front says”yea theres a whole alot of river,go fu$%ing fish somewhere else.We just left as we only have so many hours to fish and did NOT want this to end up ugly so to speak.I have a few things to bring up.
1)Later in the day we are working spinners in a small channel and we had caught a few small eyes(6).Anyway 3 young kids came in and parked where we were trolling.It did not bother we as they have the right to fish were the heck they want.Infact we talked to them and they were good kids just out having fun.Now I fish Spirit Lake,Ia all the time.When the perch bite gets going there are boats 10′ away from each other.And I’m talking 50 boats in a small area.I don’t care if a guy pulls up next to me.Infact alot of times it can be alot of fun as people give friendly jabs back and forth from one boat to the other.This really just put a huge negative cloud over us the rest of the tourney.Maybe it was a user to this sight?I would love to hear why you thought you owned that whole wingdam?It was 2 guys,one maybe 60-the other around 30?They had a older 16ft Alumacraft with Iowa tags on it.Anybody have a idea who it could be?.Thanks to all of you for looking at this post.
Again thanks to Dave Koonce for all his help,what a great person.Also to Dave Phillips for spending the day with me and catching that nice walleye!
Ryan Hale,Iowa GNWC angler.

Sorry to see that sort of thing happening out there Ryan, but it’s getting to be quite commonplace nowdays. I dought if being in a tourney had much to do with it but, it may have turned the screw in the guys butt a little farther in. In case he had carried through with his threat of cutting your lines, you’d had every right to turn him in to the dnr.
1- For running to close to you and
2- For interfering with a legal outdoor activity.
Then again, he may have done the same thing to you.
Hate to say it, but there are some things people do that we just have to learn to live with.
How did you do in the tourney?

You did nuttin wrong..if i woulda been in the boat wif ya,we woulda been scrapin with them!!!

It all depends what kind of presentation these guys were using. If they were anchored then you did nothing wrong. If they were trolling the dam or working it back and forth then I would have been as pissed as they were.

Troy Patterson

Ryan, sorry to hear your luck went south. Some local guys think they own the river. Trust me guys, the spot Ryan was talking about is plenty big, you could easily have 6 boats parked on it and not have a problem fishing at all. Some people need to realize that all tournament guys aren’t bad. Ryan and Brian are both great guys, and I’m sure wouldnt go out of there way to cause problems. Hopefully your bad luck is out of your system, and you guys do great in the state championship.
Dave

Ryan,

Not Good !!!

But it’s guys like that , that make me look like a great guy !!

Sorry to hear of your bad experience,If your ever in the area again just let me know ,we’ll make a day of it…

And one more thing…two boats could have been anchored on that wing dam and you could still have one boat troll 3/4’s of the thing…oh well…thats life on the big and mighty miss.

Clearly the fellows on the Wingdam were extremely rude and I am suprised after you talked to them they didn’t give in, especially on a wingdam as long as you describe. Hopefully you approached the Wingdam slowly and didn’t disturb their fishing with a large wake.

With that said I remember fishing in a tournament out of Winona, Mn. several years back. One of the rules was one boat per Wingdam, whether a tournament boat or not. It was a great rule and I suspect avoided a lot of what you encountered. Ironically, I dropped the tournament stuff for reasons most readers of this forum probably won’t agree with. But I still follow that tournament rule; if someone else is on a wingdam I simply find another spot to fish.

i agree with 2fishy, even if there is plenty of room on the wing dam (and i’m sure there was), “one boat per wingdam” sounds like a good rule of thumb to me. i’m not saying you are wrong, i’m just saying that it would definatly help aviod encounters like this one if we all stuck to a rule like this .

Personally, if I find a boat on a wingdam… I just find another. That’s just me, of course. The fact of the matter is, the stretch of river that I fish, there’s 100’s of wingdams… so finding another and fishing that one isn’t a problem.

that’s a very good point. if you’re on a pool with a limited number of wingdams it may be a little different.

Hey Ryan;

Sorry to hear about your confrontation. Unfortunately, these stories are becoming more common. I’m sure you have heard of “A few bad apples spoil the basket” That has happened to an extent in tournament angling of all levels. Heck, we have “Pros” (and I use that word with much sarcasm) yelling at service crew guys and crashing local pre-tournament meetings telling anglers to “Stay off my spot–I have a chance to win $50,000!”

The truth is tournament anglers are always being watched and scrutinized…that is the nature of the beast. Tournament anglers need to be extremely well behaved on and off the water for our sport to continue to grow.

I applaud your decision to leave the area in question. Something that has worked for me when a boat is near the area I would like to fish, is to slowly motor up to them and ask if it would be O.K. to fish the spot WITH them. You’d be suprised how far a smile, a wave, and some friendly converstaion will get you.

Although there is no answer to rudeness on the water…and no doubt it will continue…fishing by the motto “Treat others as you would like to be treated” will always work out in the long run.

Good luck!

Eric Naig

Good Afternoon Folks
Well this is my first Post all though I have been reading posts on this site for awhile.I just wanted to chime in on this Post.Ryan and his partner(Brian),Terry and his two nephew’s were invited by Me to camp/stay where I have a trailer on a permanent site.While they were their they presented themselves in an exemplary manor.They were courteous of other campers and the owner’s of the campgrounds.Too many times there are people we meet that for what ever reason are rude,and or use bad choices for there words.This was Ryan’s first time fishing on the Mississippi,for that matter it was his first time fishing on the Mississippi in a tournament! Now I don’t profess to be a Walleye fisherman so I don’t know what the proper etiquette is for fishing on wingdams are.But I’m sure if the other fisherman would have told him. Ryan would have apologized and would have moved on to another wingdam.Ryan I’m sorry this had to be a bad experience for you on your first fishing trip to the Mississippi.Trust me when I say that there are a lot more good people on the Miss than you could ever count and my past experience’s from boat probs to just talking to the folks fishing or just out on the water has been great.Well enough of my rambling on just wanted to respond to this post and say how I felt after reading it.

Dan(Jardan)welcome to the site.It is a great site.Also thanks again for letting us stay at J-Wood at your place.I guess the whole point of it is how I was talked to right off the start.It wasn’t nice at all. These guys were dropping f-bombs and were very rude.It should have been handled way different.Hey be cool with me and explain things and I’m on my way.This guy says that tourney fisherman think they own the river but yet he tells me that I can’t fish”his”wingdam.So who thinks they own the river here?But to tell you the truth these guys were probably jerks everyday of their life.You know what makes me mad is I’m the type of guy that would take their kids,grandkids fishing.I had a cam corder with me and should have recorded the whole thing.I guess I was in shock over the whole deal.Anyway thanks for all the comments and opinions.
Ryan Hale

Hi jardan;

Welcme to the BEST site on the net!! Are you the jardan I’ve read on the Iowa Outdoors site? Once again,welcome!!

Welcome Jardan, you’re joining a great group of people here.
Well put Eric Naig.
You know, it’s mighty easy to sit back and read about something that happens to someone on the water and analize what’s the best way to handle it. But until it happens to us personally, we really don’t know what we’d do for sure. Chances are it wouldn’t be what we advise others to do simply because I think we’d be caught by suprise.

Hi BigB
Sorry it took so long to post a reply.Yes I am the jardan you have seen on Iowa Outdoors.I will also be back up north again this wknd fishing on the Miss.