Dock fishing etiquette

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Too cold here for barechested brunettes…

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Try removing the plastic or pork from your jig and take off the weed protectors. It makes it easier to hook up with a bikini leading to less misses. I find if you miss them on the first try you generally spook them.

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Try tying on a plastic spider, the jumping, therefore bouncing , gets to be quite entertaining. Sometimes you will get them to just rip off the top if the cast is accurate enough, and there you will be to come to her rescue in your boat after she jumps in.

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Too cold here for barechested brunettes…

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Try removing the plastic or pork from your jig and take off the weed protectors. It makes it easier to hook up with a bikini leading to less misses. I find if you miss them on the first try you generally spook them.

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Try tying on a plastic spider, the jumping, therefore bouncing , gets to be quite entertaining. Sometimes you will get them to just rip off the top if the cast is accurate enough, and there you will be to come to her rescue in your boat after she jumps in.

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I fish docks if nobody is on the dock. If I snag I carefully remove. Always respectful. I have never had anybody ask me to leave that I recall and I sure don’t do that to others fishing my dock.

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Each one has had thousands of dollars worth of damage done to their canopies, boat interiors and docks

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Now you and/or your clients are really stretching it

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Custom Bimini tops for boats, custom canopies for their custom boat lifts holding underneath their vintage wooden boats and 40′ yachts, stretching the truth egh? Try again. I’m not on a side here really, but I don’t put a veil of ignorance over my eyes either.

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I can see some of them having 1,000s of dollars worth of damage but that would be the exception not the norm. You said “each one has had $1000s of damage”. That isn’t true. My parents have a house in the metro on a lake that gets pounded hard with a dock, boat, and canopy lift. No damage done in 20 years.

Try having an arrant cast with a monster muskie bait, and having to go retrieve it from someone’s dock or canopy

I fish docks a lot when I bass fish. If the dock is occupied by fisherman I swing out and move on to the next one. Anyone that fishes docks and hasn’t clanked one off the dock is lying. If I hook the dock or lift that I was
Casting I just drive up to the dock and unhook (only once having to get out of the boat to do so. And I have definitely hit a few boats. I try to error on the side of caution when fishing around a boat. And when I fishing tonka and there is a 200K plus yacht there I a lot of times don’t even cast at it. I have yet to run into the dock owner that gets mad when you fish their dock, only the friendly how’s fishing or getting any? I hope to never run into the dock owner that thinks they own the lake.

Probably the crankiest person I have ever encountered is my own mother. When they had the cabin, she saw the dock area as a swimming beach for her grandkids. If she saw someone with hooks in the area, she was quite vocal and nasty whether kids and beach toys were present or not.

She’d ask me if I ever was that inconsiderate to fish around someone else’s dock…

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When they had the cabin, she saw the dock area as a swimming beach for her grandkids.

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There are a couple places where I fish that have brought in sand to make their own beaches adjacent to their docks. While these spots are dynamite places to fish I pass them up just because of the hook factor.

In this picture you can see my dock, we call it our cul de sac. We are on a channel that connects our lake to another. In the spring the Crappie fishing is fantastic for a few weeks and there can be two boats fishing it at once. It gets a little frustrating but hey it’s public water.
It’s always fun to sit down there with a cooler and and just hammer the Crappies and Bass.

To me, its all a matter of how sociable the occupants of the dock are

That’s hilarious!

Is that Brian? Where is the stinkbait?

In a couple of days fishing docks I only had one person say much about it. I was still learning how to skip under docks and banged one off his dock it did not do any damage of course and the guy starts yelling to stay off the dock. Like yeah thats the point of casting near your dock is to hit it still was a lot of fun!

First World problems.

If it’s such an issue pull the docks, lifts, etc off public waters. My lake home would be perfect if not for fisherman, give me a brake and go complain with caviar stuck in the pearly white fake Tooth’s.

I’m respectful and have never had a big issue. If you’ve never hit anything, ever dock fishing you ain’t doing it right or haven’t been doing it for very long.

FryDog62 wrote:

How about throwing your worm up on a boat canopy and letting it slide down into the water, or clanging your jig off someone’s pontoon?

First off you need to know the difference between personal private property and public waters. You touch my personal property with your lure you’re apt to find a treble hook across your personal face. I can’t believe you would type such bs on this site. Have you no scrupples? .

Mike Stephens wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>FryDog62 wrote:</div>
How about throwing your worm up on a boat canopy and letting it slide down into the water, or clanging your jig off someone’s pontoon?

First off you need to know the difference between personal private property and public waters. You touch my personal property with your lure you’re apt to find a treble hook across your personal face. I can’t believe you would type such bs on this site. Have you no scrupples? .

Actually I don’t think it makes sense to bounce a lure off a canopy and have never even considered it… you’re much better off skipping underneath the dock where the fish are anyway. But ask the homeowners on Minnetonka for instance, many will tell you that there are fishermen that have damaged their canopies.

So, back to my original post sitting between two guys with opposite viewpoints on the subject there is a lot of strong opinions on this issue and people will draw the line at different levels. That’s why I posted to get a variety of input and generate a discussion.

Personally, I tend to use a hook and plastic with no lead so not to do any damage or even being perceived as doing damage. Others, especially my tournament fishing friend, will do most anything to win a jackpot.

Mike Stephens wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>FryDog62 wrote:</div>
How about throwing your worm up on a boat canopy and letting it slide down into the water, or clanging your jig off someone’s pontoon?

First off you need to know the difference between personal private property and public waters. You touch my personal property with your lure you’re apt to find a treble hook across your personal face. I can’t believe you would type such bs on this site. Have you no scrupples? .

I dont think he was saying to do that, more of a “what if” scenario.

I guess Personally I see the only reason to not fish a dock would be if there were people using the dock. Just pass it up and fish the next one.

Nothing will make me move from a dock faster than me embarrassing myself by clanking the dock. Especially if someone ifs out there and they are cool with you fishing the dock.

I knew a guy who would tie rope to plastic milk jugs, creating a “swimming area” for his kids, anchored down, which encompassed the dock also. No lures EVER were thrown inside the sacred ring… lest they get snagged and lost..

…which begs the question, is it legal to rope off a swimming area in front of you property on a public lake?

mplspug wrote:

…which begs the question, is it legal to rope off a swimming area in front of you property on a public lake?

I can hear the war from home at the desk.

We came across one of those big floating donut-shaped inflatable things that get tethered or anchored off shore. This one was about twenty foot out into the lake. Nobody was on it so we worked our way around it casting small jigs to the shade-shadow line it created and were popping crappies pretty consistently. The home owner came out and had an absolute cat that we were anywhere near that thing fishing….gonna call the sheriff, gonna call the game warden, yada, yada, yada. Make the calls we said. We’d wait for them. lol

To get on this thing a person had to swim no less than 20 feet from shore. The water under it was close to 17 feet deep. We were not bouncing any jigs off the thing and we didn’t ever hang up on whaterever was holding it in place, but the thing was clearly not in an area that offered any legal recourse to this sap. I’d imagine milk jugs creating a “zone” could also get people excited but I would not fish in an area where kids might get hooked if a jig broke off. This float though was a wholly different story.

mplspug wrote:

…which begs the question, is it legal to rope off a swimming area in front of you property on a public lake?

You’d need a permit to do so in MN.

One of the ponds me has the No Fishing (unless member of the HOA) signs, but there is a public trail that butts up to the shore, so I assume the sign holds no water, pun intended. There is at least one plastic chair on the bottom that I can only assume someone intentionally put in there to deter “trespassers”. The funny thing it they used a molded plastic patio chair, so they created some good cover with something that is practically snag free. I’d think the cracked cement culvert that is there would have deterred people already.

Love that pipe. I can flip it 5′ from shore and there is usually a bass in there waiting.

As soon as a person puts a dock into the water, the dock becomes an obstruction in the water. Just like a fallen tree. If the home owner doesn’t want someone to fish around it, than they should remove it from the water. If someone is swimming around the dock or fishing off of it. Give them some space and try your best not to hit their dock, boat, or whatever they have in the water. That being said we do have some small damage around our dock. But it was our choice to put it in the water. I don’t feel that the large floating things should be left in the water. You should remove them when you are done playing with them.

My father is retired and living at their cabin. He encourages people to float by and fish around his dock. He enjoys talking to them and getting information about different bites. Then once us ‘kids’ come down with our children for the weekend, he has some pointers to give the grandchildren.

A couple years back, he went to raise his Sea-legs on his pontoon and a spinnerbait that was broken off, got stuck in the mechanism. It was not a very cheap fix, but accidents happen. The person who cast and lost the bait had no idea what they were stuck on, I’m sure of it. Didn’t change his perception, still welcomes the company.

I think cabin owners that fish are far more tolerant than those that don’t.

we used to put the “raft”… about 100′ out from the dock… 8×8 plywood/carpeted with (4) 55 gallon steel drums under it. It was a great spot to catch sunnies when it was hot out… we would care less about the boats that targeted it

So im starting to see more and more docks with ribbon put around the dock to try to prevent people from fishing it. I usually skip under so I will usually fish them. do most people fish docks where people do this?

I don’t have any problems with guys fishing the docks at my folks place but just respect people’s property. If you snag something, get out and actually remove it from the dock or canopy.

We have to be extremely careful taking the dock out because guys bust lures and hooks off underneath it. A couple of years ago my dad sliced his wide open on a big worm hook.

I’m not saying the fisherman should have gotten underneath the dock and removed it but it was a bad deal.