boat traffic

There is nothing that irks me more than irresponsible fisherman. There is no excuse for something like that. Not only does it cause hard feelings, it also gives the rest of us a bad name. Maybe a couple casts over the bow of their boat would have gotten the point across. My 2 cents.

Gator Hunter

Some friends and I were drifting together below the Y and the subject boating habits came up. We all prefer to fish bass in the summer. The conversation went to what would happen if we drove our bass boats through a bunch of anglers like many people did on Sunday. I’d bet we would have gotten lots on one-fingered salutes. Why would anything think its OK now but not at other times?

I have been fishing the dam area for about 15 years and have found the crowds are getting much bigger but surprisingly I think the fishermen are getting better in regards to respect for each other. I can remember many a time in the early days when a fisherman would be cussing and threatening another fishermen for violating “their” space.

I think the internet has helped a lot in this area. We are more tolerant of others and it is very easy to identify a person who is cussing out another for whatever reason. One thing that would help is a “fishing/boating/launching etiquette” webpage with suggestions like you have made. We could print it off and give it to people who don’t know they are doing something that aggravates others.

I would be glad to put a webpage together if others would want to add their tips as a response to this thread. I would probably host the webpage on the Walleye Searchers website as we already have a etiquette section for partners at the bottom of our Tournament Guidelines webpage http://www.walleyesearchers.com/guidelines.html

Dave Gulczinski

I thought about doing that but then they would have known what i was using LOL. i dont get it either but i guess if thats the way people want to be i guess we will just have to deal with it.

Had the same problem a few years ago. A couple of boats were pulling 3 ways near the dam and had been for about 2 hours. All boats coming in saw what we were doing and respected the zone we were using. About 10 a boat from a state south of Minnesota comes in and plops his anchor right in the middle of where we were fishing. To make matters worse he starts casting toward the shoreline and was using kite string as an anchor rope. You almost feel like doing something that would get you sent to the big house. But as I tell my kids, deal with the situation and move on they’ll get their dues. On the flip side I have seen people move near me when I’m not catching a thing and use a diiferent technique and start catching fish. With a little input from them I tried their techniques and started catching fish. 95% of the fishermen on the river are great people it is the 5% out there that gives a lot of people a bad name.

Several years ago I was on vacation with my two kids 8 and 10 years old. Fishing on a lake for pan fish. We were casting next to the weeds and pulling them out left and right. Here comes this pontoon boat going like a bat out of hell with extremely loud CW music for all to hear. They ran right over the weed bed we were fishing and tossed a beer can out as they passed. They stopped about 20 yards past us and were having a grand ole time. We just moved down the shore line another 50 yards past them and started catching the fish again. they sat there and fished cussing about the lack of fish in this lake watching my kids have their way with the fish.

It’s times like this that I wish my new Lund came equipped with torpedo’s

I know the feeling well!. A few years ago we were in the middle of a better than a decent bite to a pretty darned good one. A local moron came up river with two 50 horse johnsons, both running, and trolled right out in front of us as we were fishing from shore. This guy didn’t even flinch and his trolling completely shut the fish off. After a few subtle suggestions of why don’t he go down stream and troll, afterall he was above the no boating allowed sign by the dam, he firmly suggested that he was going to fish there and didn’t care who liked it. Just then a couple of guys i know, who just happened to be fishing with me made a couple of inaccurate casts where as they hooked this guys poles and all they tried to do was just get thier jig off of his poles and accidently pulled his poles overboard. He looked over and got the hint and went downriver. This may not sound completely right but there was a pretty good bite going on and we had to leave because it shut it off completely. The river we were fishing you could throw a rock across it so there was nowhere else to go for us to fish. I think he’ll probably think twice again about coming up that far where he wasen’t even suppose to be anyway. In a smaller river this just dosen’t work like it does on the wider mississippi where at times its even hard to tolerate inconsiderate crowding. Let em find thier own fish. Its easy to tell the fishermen, who actually search for fish, from the people who try to take advantage of a situation. This is one of my pet peve’s i guess because i live around smaller rivers, oh well good luck and lets just search and hope for a good bite.

Here is something I tried once when a guy pulled his boat right up next to mine to fish the exact spot I was fishing and I was having alot of luck popping fish after fish. He was bound and determined to fish his jig right next to mine and catch the fish I was catching. Sure it upset me but I started talking to him like we were friends even though I’d never seen the guy before. After a short bit of friendly talking he little by little moved his jig away from my exact spot and caught a few fish of his own. It was like we had become new friends and that caused him to respect me and my spot enough to not try take my spot away from me. I also have just driven up to the dam before and saw a guy pop a fish so I decided to work an area over by that person but gave him a distance between us so I was no way near him. I was close enough to be able to study what he was doing and make out what lure he was using but not close to him. We can keep our distance so we don’t bother someone and still learn from others by watching them. Another time I was casting towards shore when someone I knew, not very well though, came along trolling right between me and the shore I was casting to and of course was moving as slow as he could. I would of loved to have made my cast and hooked something in his boat but I didn’t. Now today this same guy says hi to me everytime he sees me and is always nice to me. A friendship that never could of happened if I would of let my temper get the best of me. No, I’m not perfect, far from it in fact. This past year I was fishing and a friend of mine was drifting down stream at the dam so I pulled up in front of him and drifted down stream talking to him but I was drifting in front of him. Afterwards it dawned on me what I did [cut in front of him] so I apolgized to him for it. Even sent him an e-mail apolizing again. What I should of done was got behing him or stayed shallower than him and talked to him. I hadn’t seen him for several months and the excitement of talking to my friend took away my common sense I guess. Sometimes we don’t think until its too late and I try to look at it that way when someone is rude to me on the water. It might just be the excitement and wasn’t done intentually I try to remember. We all get excited when it comes to fishing and sometimes don’t think straight but like I always tell my kids-two wrongs don’t make a right. I even have to tell myself that too. Thanks, Bill

i agree Bill, its hard sometimes to do the right thing. It would have been better for us not to pull his poles overboard. On the back side he knows now to stay below the sign, bitter sweet maybe. i know it would have been better to not do this and fish another day. I don’t want anyone here thinking im an extreemist or inconsiderate. This guy knew what he was doing and didn’t care. Sometimes its just hard to figure.

If someone does that ice fishing…I cast into their hole.

Some of the most irresponsible and uncourtious boating I ever experienced was on Spirit Lake in Iowa last year for the RCL league championship. There were a bunch of tournament boats trolling the shallow side looking for fish and the pleasure boaters pretty much went where ever they wanted. We actually had a jet ski go between us and another tournament boat that I could have hit with a long cast.
We also had some lady pull her 2 kids on tubes about 40 feet in front of us while we were trolling.

As for ice fishing…. last Sun on Lake of the Woods we had 2 guys plop their portable down about 20 yards from us. It is a big lake….why does anyone need to be that close. Heck if it was me I would want to be as far from the roads and other people as possible, those fish just roam the basin out from Pine Island anyway…no point in crowding.

Hey Buckshot
I agree you with you the League Championship on Okoboji was a mess but what do you expect when the hold a championship tourney on a Pleasure boating lake In Iowa
look at it this way atleast you had some excitement to talk about we were on the big lake with 8 boats in a 150ft circle of each other all day fighting for the same fish.

Trust me though, there was no sleeping on that lake. It was rock n roll all day long with all the pleasure boats ”everywhere”. I heard alot of guys say it was like being in a grinder or blender as waves were coming at you from every which way all the time. Hey Nate, wanna go go fish the Iowa Walleye Opener down there this year?

We all have horror stories like this and they can ruin a day,one thing i do is give the fisherman good info. about the body of water I’am fishing.I will then move. This lets the angler know there are other places to fish and not everyone has secrect spots,and if they need info just ask someone.Most people will give info when asked.I assume these anglers are inexperenced or just don’t know better.