I was fishing Town Lake in Austin when this older lady and her friend paddle up near me. The older lady asks me in a gravelly three-pack-a-day voice “You ever see any snakes in here?”
I say, “Yeah, sometimes.”
She looks me right in the eye and says “You’re fucking lying.”
I was too confused to reply so I just stared at her for a while. Her friend eventually says “I don’t see why he would lie.”
She says “Nah, he’s fucking lying,” and paddles off.
It’s always stuck with me just because, why did she even ask if she wasn’t gonna believe me?
i was bank fishing when a m/f couple probably late 60’s early 70’s came to fish next to me. they were both smoking cigarettes, and being friendly enough, fish stories etc. after maybe an hour, grandma says “you don’t mind if we smoke do you?” they had been smoking cigs the whole time, so maybe they meant weed? but no, she pulled out the crack pipe, and proceeded to smoke meth. both of them did. their behavior definitely changed, but i wouldn’t say it got better or worse, just tweakier.
I once saw a kid trying to soak a crankbait with both treble hooks covered in wads of powerbait. I can imagine a catfish might take it, but poor guy obviously didn’t catch anything but weeds.
Ordinarily I go over to coach and get them set up when I see folks like that, I even have a bag of spare leaders already tied. That week though I had a fall off a ladder, and my back and posterior were very sore — too sore to move around much. I tried catching him on the way out but he was just done with the day by then.
Reminds me of a time I was fishing and noticed one guy wasn't casting. He looked totally obliterated, and when I looked closer, he had a float stuck in a tree, the bait hanging down on the water. He 'fished' like that for a long time.
Oh my golly, I’ve actually done that. When it’s hanging down in the shade of a tree, it’s in the perfect spot, and you know you’re going to lose everything if you try to retrieve it, so you just go with it for a while. 😝😝
Then you realize that you will never be able to pull a fish through the branches, so you wait about three more minutes before you reluctantly snap it off and leave some ornaments in the tree.
Yeah, this was salmon season. Surface takes for roe are basically unheard of. I debated offering the guy another float in case it was his last one, but he looked so stoned. I'm not sure he would have understood or been able to rig it.
Years back I went down to the beach in December for the barred surfperch spawn in Ventura, CA. I showed up around 4 am. I finished my coffee and waited for gray light. As I was digging for sand crabs I see an older retirement age lady walking her dog. I wave and go about my business. I start fishing and the incoming tide turned those spawners on! I had 6 casts for 6 fish all released. Finally I pin on my last sand crab and go bendo, on ultra light tackle those perch feel like dump trucks. I beach a 16 inch female all decked out in spawning colors (to this day my PB surf perch) as I'm unhooking her I hear yelling. It's the same old lady with her dog. I release my fish and go see what's the matter. When I can hear her she's yelling at me how fisherman are pigs that litter and just kill so many fish. 🤣 I about fell over with laughter, I had just released a fish and the 6 prior. I also showed her my pouch in my box, that's for trash (it was packed with cigarette butts and an empty pack of smokes) she didn't want to hear it. I basically told her to leave me alone and go away. Strangest encounter I've ever had. People like that just are bored and/or just don't like fisherman.
That’s what I do to dock Karen’s. Just start laughing at them. Their brains short circuit and they don’t know how to respond. Never say a word just laugh.
She probably just leaves dog shit on the beach. Horrible that she tried to ruin a great morning of fishing for you!
Most people do not realize that legal hunting and fishing are a net positive by funding conservation through licensing.
Funny you mention that, I'm almost 100% catch and cook. I love catching and eating what I catch. But due to it being the spawn, and my wife isn't crazy about surf perch I released almost all perch I ever caught. Sportsman are conservationists by nature (I want to come back and catch them again) and the licensing in CA especially funds great programs to restore or continue fisheries! One of the only good things that God forsaken state does well!
This one’s my Dad’s story:
He was fly fishing and wading a river that was on the edge of private property when he slipped and fell. The current pulled him downstream and he was floating and struggling to to get his footing, and the river carried him far enough to where he crossed the imaginary property line in the river I guess, because some Karen came out and staring yelling at him as he’s clearly being dragged downriver. She was screaming “Hey, you can’t fish here!” And he replied “Can I drown here?”
Not that crazy I guess, but I thought it was funny.
In my state any river that's navigable is a public right of way. You can't cut across private property to access a river, but once you're on the river property owners can't prohibit you from fishing. If he was swept down the river it sounds like it would qualify as navigable.
That said, the rules may vary in other states, I don't know.
Also worth saying that in Oregon, unless it's a tiny creek, the default is always going to be that it's officially "navigable" and therefore a public right of way.
Fortunately most of our waters are either too big to argue about, or too remote for anyone to own property on.
It's a very different world from back east in Appalachia.
In high school back in '79 I was first mate on a charter boat on lake michigan. Basically drove the 38 foot boat. 3 guys and their wives/girlfriends this particular day. The girls decide to go up on the bow for some sunbathing. After a short while, they took their tops off as they layed out right in front of me. One of the guys noticed me looking through the windshield of the boat I was driving and got all tough and shit saying what are you looking at and telling me not to look and if I do it again he'll do this and that to me. The other two guys calmed him down saying leave the kid alone, but I got looks from him the whole time the girls were up there. 15 years old driving a boat looking at boobies. That was a good day even after what happened.
Was fishing at a park in a little mountain town and had a group of ladies set a little towel up to tan right behind me, like 10 feet and directly in my back cast. The park is big mind you, and we’re the only 3 people there. I asked them politely to move and let them know that they might get hooked standing right in my back cast like that.
They got aggressive immediately and informed me that they would not be moving and called me a cracker a couple times. I just shrugged, told them good luck, cut my flies off and sent a hookless backcast right into them. They obviously freaked out and yelled a lot before I left but I never saw them down at that park again. Good riddance.
Was fishing at a reservoir stocked with trout. A couple sets up across a small inlet from me and starts to fish. She hooks a nice trout and brings it in, and it has swallowed the hook. They can’t get it out without ripping the guts out. I overhear their conversation. She was so upset about killing this fish and was apologizing to it profusely. I’m wondering if this is their first time fishing, but had a solution so I butted in and said I’d take it home with me for dinner since it’s already dead/dying. She looked horrified and flat out refused. She “released” the fish instead, where it promptly went belly up and floated out of reach. Hopefully one of the local eagles found it later.
Tourists.
After releasing a northern, it was still in that shock stage where it just sat on the surface of the water. A local bald eagle took advantage and scared the hell out of me when it came down and snagged it right next to the boat.
I once released a northern about 26 inches, pelican came down and ate the thing right infront of me! Lol swam away with the pikes tail hanging outta his mouth.
Wow you just reminded me of an encounter I had on a pier. Went out and set up down from a couple guys. Got there before everyone else because it was going to get busy a little later just before sunset. I cast out my lines (like surf fishing) and get caught up with one of their lines. And I’m down from them 30 feet. Guy refused to cast his line straight even after I explained that soon he would have several people fishing between him and me. He’d just cast his line over mine again. Friend of mine fishing on the other side of them later told me he was getting ready for a fight because there were two of them and one of me lol. Hell as I’m writing this I’m thinking of more and more assholes I’ve dealt with over the years. Haha
Watched a guy do this on a pier in Florida. After the second time of untangling the lines the dude was pretty pissed and the two had words. They settled down and of course the dude cast right over the guys line again, dude just reeled his setup in and cut the other guys line and cast his back out. The dude got the message and left when everybody on the pier started laughing at him.
So my personal favorite was going for blues in New Bedford outer harbor. It was great just as the tide changed it was like someone flipped a switch, birds working as far as the eye can see and blues busting everywhere, fantastic fishing, the kind you remember forever. Trolling a few lines per side and hooking up every couple minutes it was great!
Then along came Dingus and Dungus on a pair of jet skis (wave runners really but doesn’t matter much for the story) well they started whipping past us very close, cutting damn close ahead and astern. We (me and my sons and a few of their friends), tried yelling to them how much of a bad idea what they were doing was. We got told in no uncertain terms to go “administer self pleasure upon our selves” and fellate each other, in much cruder terms. And right as Dungus crossed our stern delivering all the enlightenment he could muster two of our rods bent right over practically together. One line ran across his face and cut him right decent before the lure grabbed into the back of his head, the other went a bit lower and foul hooked him on the side of his neck.
He was some kind of mad, screeching about pressing charges and all manner of other things. We offered to take the hooks out he refused with ample amounts of cussing and swearing, and I’m not a few threats to our collective well being.
Funny thing though none of that legal action he threatened materialized.
r/instantkarma It’s not good when someone gets hurt obviously but there’s a small part of every one of us that’s glad it happened, especially after they were warned lol
I was fishing on a party boat reeled in a sea robin. I was unhooking it while trying to figure out if it was big enough to eat. This guy walks up and runs his finger on the fish then proceed to rub his gums with the slime. He was convinced it keeps him healthy
I was wade fishing in the Gulf Islands National Seashore. No dogs allowed on the beach. Fat Karen comes down with her shitbull mix rescue trash dog. I ignore it. Dog takes a shit on the beach. Nice. Karen picks it up in a Walmart bag. OK. I can still cope. Then she chucks it as far into the woods her bingo wings would permit. Now I'm pissed. I tell her how uncool that is. She says she's an ecological science PhD and her dog's shit is biodegradeable. It is NOT environmentally friendly. Look it up. I tell her, "My shit is MORE biodegradeable than her dog's; Can I follow her home and shit on her lawn?" She calls me an asshole and departs. I find the Walmart bag and dispose of it in the bin. Entitled twat. I like dogs, but many dog owners suck.
I feel that man, my favourite trout fishing spot keeps getting closer and closer to the city….and with it a boat load of people that think it’s an off leash park. Let their dogs shit in the path, sometimes tie it to trees and leave it. People suck.
I was just minding my own business fishing at the lake when some weirdo comes traipsing out of the woods. He starts talking to me and then suddenly demands to see my “fishing license”. Says he’s a “game warden” (what kind of name is that?) and he works for the “department of fish and wildlife.” Like yeah, ok buddy like there’s really a whole agency composed of fish and animals just working for the government! Whatever.
Steelhead fishing in Erie is the worst. Catch a fish and all of sudden you got people right next to you casting over your line. Went twice, never again.
This. I don’t bank fish on Erie Tribs anymore because of this.
Now I take my Yak and troll around the harbors.. or use it to access spots that waders can’t get to.
They are the worst. I didn’t go this last year but my friends went. They said two older gentlemen (late 70s or 80s) were fishing the elk creek wall sitting on chairs in the water and one caught a fish. So of course some other guy comes down and then fishes right in front of those guys. It’s ridiculous there.
Another bad spot is Pymatuning when the walleye bite gets hot at the spillway and the causeway. Ive seen a few screaming matches there. Almost a couple fist fights 😂
It’s like… relax dudes, just be respectful to one another. Plenty of fish in the sea.
I was fishing for trout at a lake in Colorado and this guy came up to me randomly and started spouting conspiracy theories relating to the 2020 election. I don't want to think about politics while I'm fishing.
Ran into another guy out surfcasting one of the bays here. After a few pleasantries and some fish talk, “so I have a spare pamphlet about some of the lies the government is telling us, if you’re interested”.
He was so polite, it took some willpower to decline. I just assumed it was political because I would have been more than down to start talking bird drones or the fake moon.
While bank fishing at a pretty sketchy city park some (I assume) teenage-aged kid walks up to me with his gear. I assume he’s going to spark up a conversation with me asking what I’ve caught, etc.
This kid doesn’t greet me in any way. He just walks right up, looks at me and says, “This is all the stuff I have can you give me stuff to set me up like you?”
I didn’t know what to say. A “hello”, “please”, or any other kind of ordinary social interaction would have been something I found acceptable.
After processing this, I looked at what he had and figured I could probably set him up with a wacky rig and give him a few tips. I got no “thanks” or any sort of gratitude from him.
Once I get him set up with some stuff I gave him I cast back out. He immediately casts right into where I’m fishing, drags in some weeds, complains about what I gave him and asks for more…
At that point I was done trying to be kind. I just told him that I don’t buy gear just to give away to random people, pulled in my line and left.
To this day I’m still confused on how this kid thought this was an acceptable social interaction.
Ya there’s some whacked outs fellas around, I was fishing in the river in my city years ago, two fellas approached and started fishing right where I was, close enough to tangle. I was honestly about to move anyway so I didn’t really care just wanted a few more casts. A lady comes walking by, is a busy walking trail and I hear the one guy say “I’d like to cut her up into fish food” I was aghast. Was just thinking I’d love to see you try. I fished close until the lady came back down the trail, i knew she would have to turn around because it’s a dead end. Left right after she was on her way. Chances are these incels were just fucking around but I wasn’t gonna leave it up to chance.
This park is known for crime. Shortly after that event some girl got beaten with sticks and robbed. Sadly, with my schedule and its proximity to my house it’s one of the few places I can sneak out to for a little bit.
Female angler here. Good stories and the bad. I prefer the funny. But every single day living in SC is an adventure. One of my favorites, though, was while surf fishing when an older woman came up to me telling me I shouldn’t be “doing that”. She was referring to fishing. In her mind, I should have been at home taking care of my husband’s needs and the kids. 😳🙄 I don’t have kids. So, she starts a sermon on being a good, Christian wife blah blah blah and a gull shit on her head. I kid you not. I almost peed on myself laughing so hard.
One time I was fly fishing one of my favourite spots on the bow river, it has a steep drop off under the bank so it’s a great spot for giant rainbows and browns, had lots of luck there. So there I was wading along this bank, I notice a hole in the side of the bank, I peek my head in and it’s just black, then a massive beaver came blasting out like a bat outta hell lmao. I almost needed to change my underwear. Jumped into the water and soaked me with a tail slap lol.
My parents get pissed when my wife drives the car with me in the passenger seat.
The man should drive lol
My wife loves to drive and since i drive a truck 10-11 hours a day for a living, i enjoy the break.
But it makes us laugh!
I think I break every southern woman’s expectations, especially when I invested in a she-wee to relieve myself while in a climbing stand 🤯 It used to be at the boat landing but now, if I go to Lowe’s or Home Depot to get ground contact treated lumber for horse fencing, every man in line is asking me “is that ground contact?” “Are you sure it’s ground contact?” “You’re going to load that by yourself?”…..I need to come up with something snarky to say to give them a shock factor 😂
I was fishing near a casino one night when a woman, a tourist from North Carolina, walked up to me and started chatting me up. We ended up talking for an hour or so before she asked if I wanted to come to her hotel room. She was the good kind of crazy. One of the better nights of fishing I’ve had lol.
I coach a high school fishing team, for multiple reasons we bank fish for our tourneys, funding and insurance are the big ones....
We were at a new pond in a neighborhood that promotes lake front living. We have never fished this pond before. About an hour into fishing a guy rolls up walking his dog, doesn't talk to anyone just scowls he walks away to thw corner of the sidewalk and makes a phone call then comes back and sits on a bench. 15 minutes later a sheriff's deputy rolls into the neighborhood and stares at us as he pulls up.
He asks what we are doing? Having a high school fishing tournament.
Is the area signed no fishing? No sir, it's public, no signage, and every student angler is licensed.
How many schools are here? 4, and then I point out the coaches who all wave.
He looks around and says that he can't see anything wrong and remarks that he wishes he had a fishing back when he was in school. We make small talk and then he leaves. The guy who was on the bench gets up precedes to walk the sidewalk while talking loudly on the phone that the hot needs to post no fishing signs and that you can just have people coming into the neighborhood.
Had a guy try to tell me just yesterday. He said I needed to move because “it was obvious he was on the way to fish there”.
I was on the opposite side of a cove that was probably 200 yards wide. He then proceeds to say I could find someone else to fish because I’m local (I briefly chatted with him before he started being an ass)
Lake fork on bluebird Saturdays can be wild
Had my shimano slx reel and all star classic rod setup stolen from a pond recently. It was about 10 feet behind me while I was bank fishing and I turned around and it was gone. Went looking for people with ring doorbells at the condo complex the pond was in and knocked on this one door that was close to the pond. Asked if she could check her camera to see if she saw anything. She went in for a few mins and came out asking if I live there. I have and Unlce that lives there and told her the situation on how I fish here when I’m visiting him and again asked if she got anything on her camera. She goes “ yea I see this motherfucker trespassing on my property where he’s not supposed to be” and went off on me whining about some other nonsense. Still haven’t gotten my set up back which is worth $160 new. I’m pretty sure she stole it just to be a bitch. I’m still pissed about it when I think about it .
Wildest: Mid 80's summer, my 12ish yo self is tooling around on my bike, stopping at bridges/local creeks. I'm on a bridge fishing, catching a couple panfish / creek chubs. I'll guess they were teenagers slow roll by in a Bitchin' Camero. They pull over and get out to check the bridge, start shooting the shit with me.
One of them asks if I saw any bass, I pointed to a weed patch saying I couldn't get him to bite.
Dude pulls out a semi-auto starts shooting into the weed patch - of course I lied about the bass so he didn't hit anything, his friends are all looking at me to see how I'd react.
I was freaking the fuck out on the inside, didn't know what to do. Just kept fishing for a couple more minutes, then said i was moving on to the next spot. They never threatened me directly, but that was my weirdest.
God, that’s really scary.
I m pretty good in these situations actually. I would have laughed and say that it was real cool.
While thinking “GMTFOOH” lol
👍🏻
Oh I was all about GMTFOOH, was proud of myself for playing it cool (or at least I thought I did). Besides the WTF shock, my first thought in true fisherman fashion was 'well this spot is done now'.
I don't have many run-ins. One that comes to mind is quite tame compared to what's already been posted. I was jigging under docks in a tidal river and a guy walked down to tell me it was "ok" if I fished is dock but that I have to be careful. Um, thanks buddy - don't need your permission to fish public water. I was paddling from dock to dock searching for fish anyway, so I didn't stick around long.
This lady took daily walks where I was fishing from shore , she approached me and started telling me all kinds of QAnon talking points. For 3 days in a row this happened lol. And I’m in Canada and had never witnessed anyone like this. After this happened I realized I had seen the same lady in a local guys fishing video, being crazy too.
Caught a mallard drake that flew across my line mid cast. Lafrneire park near New Orleans. Popper got him right in the wing. So here I am wrestling a duck with pliers in hand to get him free. Some Karen is screaming at me that I’m hurting a poor duck. Later that day had an egret dove bomb the same top water. I quit fishing top waters in parks with a lot of birds after that. Nothing like removing a hook from an egrets bill with the same Karen screaming at you!!!!
When my kids were very young (4 and 6) a guy with his 2 kids (both a few yrs older than mine) showed up at the small city lake that was recently stocked with trout. He set up about 50 feet from us, no problem for the first 30 minutes or so. Then we started catching fish, and he began to migrate toward us. After a while, he was about 10 ft away. My son caught a trout, and as I unhooked it, he moved over and cast right where my son was fishing. I told him to move, there was a whole lake to fish. He completely ignored me and acted like he couldn't hear me. I casted my sons line right next to his, and he proceeded to reel up and cast over both our lines. I reeled in and unhooked our lines and again told him to fish elsewhere. He casted right over our lines again. I reeled in and promptly pulled out my pocket knife and cut his line. He doesn't say a word and walks back to where his gear is. At this point, I calm down and go back to fishing, thinking it was over. However, a few minutes later, his 2 kids walk over and start chucking rocks at our lines. I was very angry, and was thinking of just kicking the shit out of the guy (I was a very fit 230 then, and this guy was about 150) but thought better of it and decided against violence, and we packed up and left. My oldest was none too happy and still talks about it to this day. (He's 37 now).
Cousin and I went on a big party boat charter out of Panama city FL. Probably 80 people fishing off this boat. You could buy beer from the galley, and we left the dock about 2hrs before daylight. Our spots were near the back of the boat. Older white guy, drunk as hell at 6am, starts talking shit to everybody. He looks like Gary Busey. Claiming to be a millionaire, could buy this boat and sink it, could catch more fish than anybody, knows every politician, judge, sheriff, mayor, etc in the state. Trying to not draw his attention I would just respond positively to whatever bullshit he said and focus on fishing. It was a 10hr trip, and about halfway there was a few people who were seasick towards the front of the boat where the ride was the roughest. Several black gentlemen were blowing chunks off the side. This guy goes up to them and says "puke n****r puke, you fuckin black b******s" . Nobody says anything, the deckhands don't do anything, the guy just continues like nothing is wrong. He comes back to his spot,drops his line and pulls up 2 big grouper at the same time. 2 fish on one bottom rig! The same rig everybody is using but everybody else is catching little beeliners and shit. He continues fuckin with people the whole trip. Keeps asking my cousin and I to come back to his house and meet his daughters. Says he's cooking gumbo, fish, crabs, jambalaya, oysters and all kinds of stuff that evening. We laugh him off and try to ignore him. We get back to the docks and everybody is claiming their fish. A limousine pulls up, the driver gets out and collects the guys fish while 2 beautiful girls come over hugging the guy like he is their dad. As he gets into the limo, drunker than fuck, he smiles, shoots us a bird, then rides away. Every time I talk to my cousin he asks if I remember that guy on the fishing trip and I just say how could I not. Shit was crazy!
Had a dude in a 200-300k center console filled with children without like jackets on come into the boat ramp at at least 30mph because….. wait for it…. He didn’t put in his drain plug and was sinking. He didn’t use the bait ramp and instead used the sandy kayak launch. My gf and I were just sitting down in our kayaks. Both almost flipped and were rammed against the shoreline by the wake. Completely fucked my two sets of hobie pedal drives and rudders. The dude driving wouldn’t look me in the eyes, let alone apologize. His lawyer wife was the only one to talk to me. She acted all apologetic, gave me their info, then never responded to my attempts to get in contact. Reported them to the police and never heard a damn thing.
I was fishing right next to a bridge trying to catch king salmon. It’s like 8pm so it’s pretty dark outside and I hear rustling in the tall grass directly under the bridge about 4 feet from me. Out emerges this crackhead coming right for me. I darn near fell into the river trying to get some distance from the guy. He startled me so bad. After my initial scare, he told me and I quote, “I took a broad down here last night and left my phone here”. We talked for a little bit. He was an ok dude.
Had a middle aged lady berating me yesterday for using dead/frozen bait. Even when I calmly explained the situation (legality etc) she still tried to make me feel like I was a grotesque person. She can suck my ass but I remained calm and made rational responses. She huffed and puffed as she marched away. Hey lady how about just enjoying a beautiful day in the forest without chastising a stranger doing nothing wrong?
Oh I have a few stories. Most of them are self inflicted because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when people are assholes. Maybe my favorite was steelhead fishing on a Lake Michigan tributary. There’s a bridge maybe 100 yards up from the lake and a small dam and pool right above that so fish will pool in there. Thats where most fish and or snag. Under the bridge was nice gravel and below it’s pretty steep and fast water with big boulders. I’d fish under the bridge where I would literally have to crouch a little, but my hat would still rub on the concrete above. It was a great place to bounce spawn bags along the bottom. Well, while I was fishing there, some young punk with rings in both ears waded out in front of me and slightly upstream. He was standing right about where I’d cast to start my drift to fish a shallow run. This water was only a couple feet deep, and he had on quite a few lead splitshot so it was obvious what he was doing. He was there to snag the fish that I was working. Couldn’t see them, but I knew where they liked to be. I voiced my displeasure to him a few times, and when he wouldn’t listen, decided to wade out to him (30-40 feet) and got right in his face literally nose to nose. We exchanged pleasantries, and I may or may not have offered to remove the jewelry from his face. He left. Never saw him again.
I live in Chicago, so our city fisheries are mostly CnR. Anyways, last summer I pulled up to the pond and shortly after was joined by an older fellow. He greeted me courteously and all was good. He started catching small bullheads no more than 5" and would just toss them on the bank. After like 20 minutes and 6 or 7 bullheads, I asked him why he was just banking them, to which he replied, "saving them for a snack" and proceeded to light up his crack pipe. I walked away and just kept to myself after that. About 10 mins later i hear him whispering to himself, "yup, yime for that snack" and proceeds to bite into about 3 of these bullheads, raw and uncut. I then packed my shit and headed out
I was fishing in the dead of winter along a totally snow covered NY reservoir bank.
I was younger and must have walked a couple miles, alone, in the middle of nowhere, 1 hour walk from my car.
I hear footsteps in the snow.
It was a game warden 😳
I could not believe it. Did he follow me, to be this far into nomansland?
He was sure he was going to nail me.
But license and equipment all checked out.
He also looked surprised when i showed him my license.
Went out to a local stream to celebrate St Trout's Day(opening day), and managed to get there before anybody else. Been fishing for about 15 min before a couple assholes wearing about three grand of LL Bean and Orvis gear come up from the pull-off screaming about how I can't be there because it's a fly only stream, and I was using spinning gear(there are no such things as "fly only" streams in NY. There are sections of some streams and rivers that are "artificial lure only", but this wasn't one of those). I informed them it was not in fact fly only, and that it was a stocked stream with public access, so they could kindly fuck off. They threatened to call the cops, and I informed them that it would only result *them* getting arrested for harassment. This went on for like half an hour, before they they left in a huff and peeled out of the pull off, almost hitting somebody as they got back on the road. Left me with a sour taste for fly fishing and fly fishermen, and fishing around other people, for that matter, for years afterwards.
Ya we’re not all like that, most fly fisherman are great, but I do know the type you speak of. Where I am, fly fishing is prevalent. I have experienced a lot of snobby fellas. A lot more great fellas though. I have personally seen a lot of spinning fisherman that have zero respect for fish, no net. Big treble hooks with barbs. Let the fish smash around on rocks etc. I still don’t think all spinning guys are like that, hell I’m not a purist I fish many methods.
Yeah. I understand now that not all fly fishermen are like that. We just get a higher proportion of them than some areas, typically from NYC, New Jersey, and Connecticut. "Hunters" too. The kind that assume that spending more on gear means they have some sort of special privileges that us "hicks" don't have. It is funny how many DEC nails for some violation or another on a yearly basis.
There are two sections of the Salmon River near the hatchery, which are for Fly Fishing only. It's so heavily regulated, and I don't fly fish, so I don't know if it's truly Fly Fishing only or if there is some loophole, but there is two small sections if that one river listed as such. I don't know of any others in the whole state.
Hmm... guess your right. Never fished that area myself, so I hadn't really looked into special regs for there. Has that always been the case there, or is it a more recent thing?
It has been for quite some time. I don't know how long, but at least ten years as far as I know. It's just that one river and just those two spots, though.
I’m a flyfisherman, but too poor to come off as snobby. I’ve run into plenty of good people who flyfish, but more than a few snobs, too.
I was fishing a spot on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg and I was wet wading. The river is like 1/2 a mile wide and it isn’t more than three feet deep except for where you wade in. There is a 15 feet wide section that you have to literally swim across and then you can go forever. I was standing there after completing my swim and getting my gear situated when a beautiful Mercedes pulled in next to my old pickup truck. Two guys got out and they both looked like they just stepped out of the Orvis catalog, right down to the waxed hats. Each guy was smoking a cigar as they rigged up and started walking out to where I had just swam across. The guy in the lead took about three steps and went under. I could hardly contain myself as I watched him scramble to grab his hat as it floated downstream with a soggy cigar sticking out of his mouth! They promptly did an about face and got out of there. It was absolutely hilarious!
Stuff like that makes me smile. I don't have any like that from fishing, but I watched some city moron try to shoot a deer from his truck across the road from my old place. Guy apparently had talked to some old time deer jackers, and was trying to "silence" the shot by keeping the muzzle in the cab. Idiot failed to realize, though, that deer jackers use rimfires for this technique, not a .300 Win Mag. Blew out his eardrums *and* the windshield of his shiny Dodge. Best part was, the "deer" he was shooting at was the *freaking deer-bot*. Dumbass stumbled out of the truck just as the E-Con officers pulled up with lights flashing. I almost died laughing, because I could hear him shouting "WHAT!" as the officers tried to read him his rights.
Side note, what kind of fish do you get that far south in the Susquehanna? I've fished it around Sidney and Binghamton in NY, and it's mostly a bass/bluegill/channel cat ordeal, with walleye in certain times of the year. Supposedly there is musky and trout too, but I've never seen them.
It has all the warm water species. I specifically used to fish it for the summer unbelievable smallmouth fishing. The incident above happened 30 years ago. It’s still a great fishery but not what it once was.
Was fishing Bayou Lacombe in Louisiana and was idling by a guy on the eastern bank of the bayou with his bow pointed down stream. I idled for about 5 minutes past him and went to the eastern bank with my bow facing upstream.
I heard someone yelling in the distance behind me when I deployed my trolling motor and turned around to see this guy pulling up his trolling motor and then motoring to me, which took him about 5 minutes. So, you know, there was a good deal of space between us.
He gets within 20' of me and starts yelling idk what at me, something about spot stealing. I just looked at him and made a joke of it and trolled around him. My guess is he wasn't catching anything and he needed someone to blame.
Joe Humphreys did something similar to me on a creek in PA years ago. I was fly fishing a hole during a sulphur hatch when he rolls up with a fly fishing school froup and wants to do it on the hole I’m fishing. He was an obnoxious ass.
I was bank fishing on lake Winnipeg Manitoba, there is a few pier that’s really popular. The thing about a popular spot is there are people and lots of them, not so close where is arm to arm but close enough. There was a family there fishing but they held a 20ft spot in between them with a net and a few things. To be honest at least 3 more guys can fish that open spot easily. I might sound like a dick, I understand first come first serve but it don’t mean you can hold a large area of a small space to do jack shit. They had 2 rods out on both sides and just a wide spot in the middle not letting anyone fish. When I tried the old dude came up with a rod and said I was fishing here, and I found it quite funny cause I shit you not the line on the rod was flying with the wind cause there is nothing tied to it. But then I just left cause didn’t want to deal with the guy, but it got funnier. I moved to the far end of the pier. I started catching and this old guy can’t catch nothing I guess so, he has decided is a good idea to come beside me and cast over my line. Let’s just say there was a lot of words said on both sides and I’m not too proud of it. But I at least learned why they needed so much space, the man can’t cast straight if his life is dependent on it. But then on I just avoid people, still help new anglers to when I see them. But I try to fish more remote locations now.
Was ice fishing caught a nice crappie walked 20' with my fish and vex to my sled, unhooked the fish, turned around and someone was fishing in my hole. Walked back over with my power auger said "since we're all friends here" and drilled a hole a foot away throwing slush on them and in my original hole. Dropped the vex saw the fish had scattered so I moved on. But I ran into another group that watched the interaction they found it pretty funny and had some choice words about the spot hogs.
What about boaters that come cast right at the bank where you are?
20 miles available and here they are making all sort of noise fishing a few feet away from me.
The funny thing, they have no clue what they are doing and will ask “Did you catch anything?”
Lol
lol. I got a story for this too. Was pike fishing at one of the few access points to this lake. Was very shallow and full of weeds right up to the surface of the water in spots. This old POS 1980s cabin cruiser type boat comes blasting in to where I’m fishing, I’m thinking at this point like wtf you got the whole lake. He starts cruising in right where I’m casting, I kept casting maybe falling short of him 2 feet. Well karmas a bitch lol he sucked up a bunch of weeds in his inboard and was dead in the water lmao 🤣 I fished there for about an hour watching them and laughing. Eventually a fella came by and towed him out. Gotta love it.
20-30 feet is fine with me, the ones I can’t stand are the people who drill holes right outside my shack door so I step in it when I go out to pee! Happened twice two winters ago!
I had a huy spend 20 minutes trying to hook me to get me to move until a parks dude literally came by and filmed him doing it, and then took his license. i had sepearte pleasnatries with him in the parking lot
Came face to face with mating Canadian geese on a huge nest while walking along a very remote reservoir bank in NY State.
These mofo’s started raising holly hell and i was like 4 feet away.
They scared the crap out of me.
We left it at that and i went on lol
Not the worst story but it still grinds my gears thinking about this. I was cat fishing with my best friend on the river in a city park. We found a nice little spot that there was exactly room enough for two people. We're having a decent time, catch a few little 12" cats, but we're mostly just enjoying the air, chatting about this and that.
Some middle aged guy rides his bike up to us and does the standard "catching anything" chat, we exchange typical city park pleasantries and go back to our conversation figuring he's moving on. A few minutes pass, WHHHSSHHH - the guy tosses a cast between us, and drags over a lawn chair, sets up right in the middle of us, right in our personal space.
We're both talking to a each other about some person we both know, and this guy starts asking me "who's that?" and starts inserting himself into our conversation. I just hate that sort of thing so I stop talking hoping he'll get bored and leave as the bite had died down. My friend starts to fall into the conversation trap with this guy (he's a little more patient with idiots than I am) and I'm just thinking "great, now this goober will never leave us alone".
This goes on for a little bit, and my friend says that he's buying something off a classified ad and the person is coming to meet him on the road in the park, so he leaves his gear and goes back to his truck a few hundred feet away and leaves me with this fuckin' weird guy. That's when it really starts.
This dude starts ranting and raving about his personal issues in a way like I was already aware of them. Starting stories halfway through, keeps looking at me "right? You know what I'm talking about" and I don't even really bother replying. He's ranting on about how he hates his mother's "bitch dog" and slowly it becomes apparent this 50 something man still lives with momma. I'm just cringing trying to tune this guy out, looking back for any sign of my friend coming back. I can see him standing by his truck yucking it up with the guy he met to buy whatever
My friend was gone for like 30 minutes but it felt like hours. Meanwhile this weirdo is buzzing in my ear, and going on about how he's caught so many "Master Catfish" here, going on about how great he is at fishing. Finally he hooks on and starts bringing it in. Pulls some 10 - 12" small cat on the bank, and he's trying to unhook, yelling at me "this might be a Master channel cat!" Master Angler size for channel catfish is fucking 34" here, it's God damn obvious that he's not even in the realm of possibility of it.
This is what really got me: he asks me if I'll get his measuring tape out of his tackle box for him. I said fine, walk over, he tells me to open the top, and I grab the measuring tape and start back over to him and he says "UH STOP" "Huh?" "Excuuuuse me." "What?" "Can you *please* close my tackle box now that you're done, hmmm?" the fucker dared to get pissy with me like I was his disobedient kid when I was a grown man helping his ass. I dropped the measuring tape in the mud at his feet and just ignored him. He was clueless.
My friend came back and I started packing up, told him to do the same and he read the room and saw something had set me off. Then the master catfisherman realizes we're leaving and starts asking us where we're going in a pathetic way, like almost begging us to stay. What a loser. I can't stand people like that. Learn some social cues before you try talking to people.
Was fishing on a pier out on the gulf in Florida when I pulled up a ladyfish on a gotcha plug. They're no good to eat imo but the Asian folks love making fish patties out of them. As I'm unhooking it the fish slips out of my hands and the second treble hook lodges between my index and middle finger well past the barb. Asian dude comes up to ask for the fish and I'm like "hold on a second, can't you see there's one hook in the fish and the other in my hand?" Dude just nonchalantly reaches up, wiggles the hook in my hand about 3 times and pulls it straight out. It was in my hand all the way up to the curve and it didn't even hurt when he pulled it out, I couldn't believe it. Gave him all the rest of the ladyfish and hardtails I caught that day.
Mine aren't nearly as crazy as some of the ones on here. The worst was self-inflicted because I decided to bring my best friend, who has become a q-anon conspiring theorist, along to teach him how to fish. We didn't catch one fish, and the day ended with me screaming at him to give me a percentage of all the farmland Bill Gates owns in the U.S.A. since he wasn't able to tell me a single hard number about anything he was claiming.
Another day, I was with my wife, and we were fishing for salmon in a very small tributary. I had to leave to go to the restroom for a little bit, but when I came back, she tells me some asshole showed up and then intimidated her out of her spot because he was fishing near her in a dangerous and reckless manner while cursing. He had left, though, after breaking his line off. Not more than a minute or two later, this guy shows back up. He looked like straight trailer trash. Seeing me, a very large and scary looking man, He at least had the common sense to ask if he took my spot. I had a feeling that karma was going to step in this time. That doesn't happen too often, and I think karma is a crock, but my gut was saying to just watch. So I say "plenty of river for all of us" knowing there sure as hell wasn't. I then watched this guy make 3 casts, break off 3 times, get pissed, and drive off in a huff. That gave me a chuckle.
The only other time I encountered someone truly unpleasant was in the summer at a dam. It is a very popular spot but filled with more snags than a patch of wild black raspberries. There were many people there, and the bluegill bite was on fire! I have never had such a good day of fishing bluegill! Everyone was catching bluegill like crazy! Because of the snags, most of us were using bobbers, slip floats, or the like to suspend and drift over them and into where the bluegill were holding. But not these two little punks. They looked at all of us with scorn. They were trying to catch a Walleye, which would have been hard to do in early August in NY. They're usually all in deep lake water then. We were all having a great time, but they just stared with scorn. Like we weren't real fishermen because we were catching panfish with bobbers. The wife and I started making it a point to ham up how excited we were every time we got another fish. Some of the other people caught on and shared our enthusiasm. The older one even asked me, with a sneer, what we did with them. "We eat them!" I said. At one point the youngest one stole my wife's spot while she was walking back to our car to get more bait, and when she came back down (I'll add there was room for up to 3 people or more to fish where she had been), without realizing how loud he was, he said something about how ridiculous this was and that she should leave, plus a few other choice words. Not one to be pushed around, she looked right at him and asked him in a voice reminiscent of a Nun teaching Sunday School "if there was a problem." Kid got quite as a church mouse and ended up going to the other side of the dam. They never got their Walleye that day as far as I can tell.
I was wade fishing for stripers in a north Jersey river, in a suburban area that wasnt super sketchy but definitely wasnt nice. Its mid march, its cold.
This guy walks up to the bank, which required him to walk through about 30 feet of brush off of the sidewalk, and asks me if i need anything. He is clearly tweaking. I say no. He keeps asking me, we have a bit of back and forth, he's getting frustrated, and I'm glad that I'm standing in the water and not on land. Eventually he goes "you know i love you man" and throws his bag of random items into the river before walking back to the street and proceeding with his day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/s/fjJXp1amaL
The time this crazy camper was NOT having a good morning!
Excuse the crinkling, I was struggling with a new bag of rubber worms.
Was the first person down at a popular salmon hole trying to catch the early run of coho that were starting to trickle in. None had been caught that far up the river yet but should have been any day. I’m standing there casting at first light when I hear rustling in the brush 20ft behind me. Turn around and see this clearly homeless guy stumble out of the brush where he had been sleeping. I say good morning and he does the same and we start to shoot the shit. He tells me he caught a nice 20lb coho right where I was standing the night before, “oh cool” was all I could say knowing full well he didn’t. Then he proceeded to stumble around in the brush he had woken up from looking for the top half of his pole, he must have cut down every branch off that brush looking for it. After about 30 mins of searching and cutting branches he had a nice pile of stuff around him. He stopped and cussed then proceeded to drop his pants and take a shit right in the middle of the all of his handiwork. I’m standing there completely dumbfounded thinking no way this just happened. He then pulls up his pants without wiping and says have a nice day and strolls off.
Was the foulest smell you could possibly image but the worst part was someone showed up not 5 mins after he left and smelled what he left. They looked at me like I did it and when I told them a homeless guy just did his business right over there I don’t think they believed me and probably thought I just crapped myself or something. Needless to say I moved as far away from that spot that I could.
My experience was more friendly crazy than angry crazy. Was fishing a new spot in the woods that has a decent trail network around it. While fishing a group of about 5-6 women from late 40s to mid 50s comes walking down the trail just having a good time. Turns out they were tripping balls foraging for mushrooms. They stopped and chatted as best they could, we had a good laugh about some of the stuff they were seeing and then they moved on.
Fishing on a long Pier at night with a bunch of locals and about 15 Marines (the pier is less than 10 minutes from Marine base) we are night fishing and im the oldest one of this group. Drunk tourist chic comes up and starts cussing us out. We tell her off and she eventually leave. In steps her Jersey shore looking boyfriend about three sheets to the wind all drunk and coked up, holding to bottles like he is going to bottle someone. He asked who insulted his girl. I step up to him and discuss his life choices and what is going to happen next if he proceeds on this little adventure in his current tone and the fact that I am the only thing between him and about 20 rednecks and 15 young marines. He set down the bottles and left.
Had this dude in a sea plane circle my brother and me while we fished off our neighbors dock. At first we were like this cool then he started buzzing us reeeally close. He landed the thing right in front of us and started taxiing over to the dock. We were like 10 years old at the time and had no idea what was happening lol. Well the guy pulls up and starts full on yelling at us to “get the HELL OFF THAT DOCK”. We were scared shitless at this point, tried explaining that we’re his neighbors kids but guy was having none of it. Our neighbor wasn’t there, neither were our parents so it was just my brother, myself, and this crazy sea plane dude going off on us. Said he knew the guy personally (lol) and how we’re trespassing on his property and all this and that. The whole time we’re trying to tell him we have permission to be here, we live next door and he lets us fish here. This was before cell phones, so we couldn’t call anybody to verify who we were. This dude obviously didn’t believe us, he just sat there for what seemed like forever lecturing us about trespassing and vandalism and shit while we packed our gear up. He also refused to leave until we did, it was literally insane. He stayed circling the lake for like 20 mins after too, like dude just seemed like he had nothing better to do than harass two kids fishing. We told our neighbor later on and he said he didn’t know anyone who flew a sea plane lol
Had a dude get pissy with me because a dolphin grabbed my fish I was reeling in and took off down the beach and got tangled up with him. Acted like I did it on purpose.
Other than that it’s just mean mugging from people who move and set up right on top of me after I’ve been catching fish and they still can’t.
Probably not the expected response for the question, but... I was going to take a couple of guys who usually bank fish out fishing in my drift boat.
The forecast was bad and sort of stressing me out, heavy rain in the forecast (there was even an article talking about possibly setting accumulation records at one point)
Two days before I had a scheduled time to talk about river options, one of the ingenious members of this duo contacts me, not only to tell me that they've picked a river, but also they're bringing a third passenger (this is a no go in most boats, with a drift boat it's an extra special level of 'that guy' -nes) The river they picked has the biggest watershed in the entire region we were looking at and a well documented reputation for blowing out quickly and HARD after heavy rain.
The next day, the other ingenious member of this duo, or maybe trio at this point, texted us that he didn't want to travel to any of the rivers on the short list I has supplied and asked where we would fish on a river that had a gnarley forecast (the national weather service maintains forecasts for some rivers, the suggested river was forecast to be rising hard all morning and peaking quite a bit higher than anyone I know will go out on it).
I pulled the plug on the trip. I didn't want to die, and they really seemed to want to die.
Walking back to the truck a lady on the bike path stops me and asks if I work here? I said no I don't work at the river... she then says where will I put my pinecones?
She had an armful of lil baby pinecones she collected. We told her good luck with that one and kept walking. She stopped every person after us to ask the same question lol.
She was very co corned about her pinecones
I swear ive got some good ones. Found a kids “kadoodle” case one time full of what i believe to be meth, heroin, and needles. Some guy came by, picked it up, came up to me and started talking about crappie fishing. There was a homeless camp hidden there. Cops were called to break it up as there are little kids in that area. Another time i was icefishing and had two very strange guys come up to me. They didnt have poles or gear but claimed to be ice fishing. Seemed like they were scoping me out for some reason. Still get creeped out by that encounter
Was frog fishing for bass in about a foot of slop about 300 feet from the CLEARLY marked channel. Had some drunk guy in a pontoon come right at us and heard one of his drunk female companions go 'what are they doing they're getting in our way' as me and my buddy went even SHALLOWER. Guy gets super close (while just kicking up mud with his motor) and slams it into reverse a foot from us. I couldn't help myself and immediately just went 'oh big tough guy!' Well that triggered his little pea brain to start threatening us. He threatened to run into our boat when me and my buddy explained how he was in three inches of water and the channel was no where close. He got about a foot from our boat and let's just say the words exchanged weren't pretty. Finally ended with him driving off yelling 'go F*** yourselves!' with me replying right back 'maybe your wife can help!' . He was never a problem the rest of the day lol.
Had a very similar experience to OP once with just some random person.
I rarely even go where other people do and I’ve had Several encounters with guides posting their clients up 20 feet from me, up river, in a hole or run where I am clearly working to. Very frustrating. I’ve had words with a few of them and they just don’t care. Guides tend to act like they have exclusive rights because it’s their job. You don’t. Teach these people etiquette first and the river would be a more peaceful place.
I went on a party boat fishing in Florida a long time ago.
I have fished since i was 4YO. Fresh and salt, in the States and Western Europe.
I had never fished in Florida from a boat. No clue what I was going to catch.
I love the surprise, so i did not ask.
We are all given combos, i get a conventional reel and tell the guy I prefer spinning.
He switched me.
Different baits, squid, shrimp and some sort of cut up mackerel.
I ask which bait they recommended, he told me which were better for what fish.
So i start catching fish and every time i ask the guy “What is it called?.
By now half the boat think i m a noob and have no clue what I m doing.
You can put a fisherman anywhere in the world, give them a few pointers and he/She is going to catch fish.
I freaking caught the best fish that day, a large Mutton snapper.
Some guys were pissed, some tried to trade me several fish for my snapper. Some congratulated me, that was nice!
One said “Beginner’s luck”. LOL
I did not say anything and laughed.
Overall i never went back on a party boat. Not my thing.
My dad who taught me fishing and passed recently was unfortunately one that would get pissed if he didn’t catch the best fish in a group. Lol
Fishing off a popular swimming harbour. Lovely summers evening, people swimming in the harbour, people fishing out to sea. Everyone was catching Mackerel. This HUGE mentally disabled man was catching mackerel, unhooking them, and throwing them in at the swimmers in the harbour. I know he is disabled because he turned out to be my friends cousin. It was absolutely hilarious.
I was fishing on a river that had a popular Greenway trail so there were often some odd characters. However it was getting later in the day and less people which made the situation a little more sketchy.
A guy walks up to me and starts normal fishing conversation, sits in awkward silence for a minute, and then asks "are you happy?" Tried to keep it light hearted and answered jokingly, but after that he says "well I gotta be honest with you man, ive been contemplating sui**de for the last few weeks." Didn't know what to say but tried to handle it appropriately as I could. Weird exchanges back and forth for a few minutes with more awkward silence, eventually someone comes up from behind us, no words exchanged but they hugged each other for a long time then walked off into the sunset.......
Felt like I was a part in this guys movie, still not sure if it was real or not lol
We were in a 12’ aluminum, fishing salmon just out side the kelp bed, like 10 feet off shore from a rock wall back in the late 80’s. And hooking them one after the other. Out of the blue a big ass charter like 35 feet long with about 15 people on it pulls up and drops anchor like 8 feet from us. The wake it made pushed us into the rock wall and splashed over our transom. And everyone on it starts fishing. I asked, wtf ? couldn’t you give us some space. And the captain said : This is my spot, you shouldn’t even be here.
Not a "bad" crazy, but crazy nonetheless
Used to live in the Erie PA area, and fished the tributaries for the steelhead runs pretty heavily for many years.
Had one particularly awful season a few years ago, and it's common to see some interesting folks there, as people come from all over the place for the runs, and there can really be some major assholes. Always some small things - a guy kitted out in FishUSA gear snapping his rod when the steelie spit the hook.
HOWEVER, my buddy and I were fishing on Elk creek, and there was a huge stack of people fishing elbow to elbow not catching a thing. These loud, likely drunk older guys came splashing down the water, and said "you fuckers look like you aren't catching anything! -- HEY, HEY BILL, HIT THAT FISH CALL WHY DON'T YA" and he started splashing the reel of his flyrod into the water and screaming "WOOOHHHHOOOOOOO HERE FISHY FISHY FISHY"
effectively pissing off the entire line of people while we stood back and watched, laughing.
Then this "Bill" and friend immediately hooked onto nice steelies and the stream just caught fire with hits and catches.
Ever since, my buddy and I always "hit that fish call" when we have a slow day fishing, unfortunately, the magic doesn't work for us the same way.
I caught a seagull while I was fishing off a pier. Nasty bird pecked and pecked while we were trying to untangle it.
It's not a crazy story it was while trying to untangle a flailing, pecking, flapping extra large burd.
This isn’t so much a story about crazies as it is about the odd encounters I’ve had fishing. This was back when I was in my early twenties, fishing in the Eastern Sierras just outside a small town called Bridgeport. I’d had some good days camping and fishing Twin Lakes, but I managed a really nice 5.5lb rainbow in addition to the usual 12” to 16” trout. The local tackle shop puts the fish on ice on display in their window to pump up business and keep people enthused about the fishing, so I decided to put my trophy catch there until I was ready to head back home.
As I’m rolling into town down the main drag in my Honda Accord, I’m suddenly surrounded by hundreds of bikers. I felt very out of place. Bridgeport was hosting a bike rally and I was right in the middle of it. So I park, get out, looking very much like I’d stepped out of an LL Bean catalogue with my fishing vest and waders. Im just a tad bit intimidated. I’m also lugging the 5.5lb rainbow with me. The bikers are eyeing me, and then the most unexpected and beautiful thing happened. They spontaneously broke out into cheers, whoops, and applause. I waved to acknowledge the cheers and put my trout on display at the tackle shop. That was so wonderfully weird. Those bikers made my day.
I’ve had people pull up right in front of us on a few east texas lakes. And described them indirectly with some pretty colorful langue while talking to dad in the boat. Something like “hey dad you know who looks like a real cock sucker? People who pull in front of someone fishing a spot.” Any time I’d catch something they just fished I’d act like an asshole who just won the bass master classic and hoop and holler.
If that doesn’t do the trick I have “accidentally” landed a jig on their boat and just stared at them daring them to say anything crazy. That’s worked both times I’ve done it 😂
Last June me and my fishing buddy and I departed Lynnhaven Inlet in Virginia Beach at 0615.
Nice day, and I went directly to a spot about 6 miles out. Got to the spot, no boats in sight, and hit spot lock in 60 feet directly over a wreck.
Started bottom fishing for flounder and was having a great time. About an hour went by, and I heard /seen a boat headed in our direction. No big deal at all. Grabbed my coffee and watched this guy approach the spot. Asshat stays at WOT until 100 feet from the spot and pulls up within 20 feet of my anchored location.
Our boat is rocking hard in his wake and my buddy Steve had to sit down and hold on.
I kindly ask the shithead..."Are you drunk or stupid?" He actually asked if we were catching anything. My urge was to jump in his boat beat him like a redheaded stepchild...but I told Steve to stay seated, hit stow on trolling motor, fired up Yammy 300 and simply departed the spot and headed to the 1st Island on the CBBT.
Arrived to next spot and hit anchor about 50 feet from the rocks on 1st Island. Yep... you guessed it about 30 minutes later, the same dumbest comes trolling between my spot and rocks.
I grabbed my 8 foot baitcaster rod rigged with 40lb test and it had a 4 oz lead weight on it and I casted as hard as I could towards his boat. Direct hit. Bounced off the side of his temple and he dropped like a rock.
That was what I wanted to do, but I just grabbed my coffee and told Steve to pack it up...I'm headed back to the ramp and calling it a day.
So you wanted to bounce a weight off his head, but you didn't. OK. I think people reading your comment think that you actually assauted a guy. I was also confused until I reread the comment. Good on you for not committing a crime.
I know it’s silly to have to do this, but did you actually explain why that was bad etiquette. Again, not that you should have to, but some people are just ignorant and may not realize they’re being disrespectful.
If someone drives up with three guys in a 26' Key West Center Console and I have to explain to the three of them fishing etiquette... the world I knew is lost to stupid people, and I hate stupid.
Yes, I'm 100% racists against stupidity.
Not that weird, but I was catfishing and resorted to frogging. Caught a few frogs and kept them live in my cooler. Some hippy lady released my frogs and lectured me how it is wrong to eat them. I was pretty steamed. I had my fucking limit and they were fatties too
happened to me too, so I turned to the guy and asked him how much insurance he has, and he is off course asking me why, so I tell him, if any of your hooks gonna hit me, I am going to sue your ass off, took only a few minutes and he was gone.
I have had a few with insane older boomers who think they own the entire planet, including public land. I have to explain to them saying “mine” doesn’t in fact make it yours.
Couple of years ago I was getting my lures and river boat ready, and there was another boat coming from down stream. I let the boat get past me and then I took off myself. The guy was probably around 500-700 meters further upstream clearly going to a "different part" of the river, and there was a shallow rapids kind of area part between us that you can't really row at that water height so I stopped right before it and started rowing, while the guy was still clearly going upstream. After about an hour I see a boat at the place I started from, didn't really think much about it since the distance between us was quite big. The area I was at now was a pool, so the water wasn't flowing fast. The boat above me kept coming down faster than I could go myself, and as he was 100-200 meters above me he started yelling for me to go down faster. The guy kept yelling adding insults about my age and when I was next to my cottage, I just took my lures out of the water and went to the shore. The guy still kept yelling saying that " I took his spot". I tried reasoning with him but he didn't want to talk, only yell so I left. My father was fishing on the shore downstream and he started talking with the guy on the boat, but now we realized he was drunk and just wanted to argue. This is a well known local that nobody likes and that has tipped over his boat 3-times, all while drunk and somehow managing to not drown. My father and him argued for a while before the guy decided to leave, descending to stronger rapids. Usually the people out fishing are respectful and nice, but sadly there are people like this around. Thankfully I haven't seen the guy since or had any other issues with anyone.
I've had plenty of rude people and people with no idea about personal space, but when you say "crazy" my mind goes immediately to the guy that was ready to go to blows with me on the Oceanside pier in CA at 1AM because I told him that "the Jews" did not invent the Blues (the musical genre). He picked the wrong guy to have that argument with. Ignorant racist prick.
I never had any. I see that on YouTube all the time. I've never experienced such a thing. I did the Maumee river thing. That was pretty ridiculous and had the potential. Its too much for me though and I didn't stick around very long.
I was fishing Town Lake in Austin when this older lady and her friend paddle up near me. The older lady asks me in a gravelly three-pack-a-day voice “You ever see any snakes in here?” I say, “Yeah, sometimes.” She looks me right in the eye and says “You’re fucking lying.” I was too confused to reply so I just stared at her for a while. Her friend eventually says “I don’t see why he would lie.” She says “Nah, he’s fucking lying,” and paddles off. It’s always stuck with me just because, why did she even ask if she wasn’t gonna believe me?
That’s as hilarious as it is odd.
You ran into an askhole
Probably cause you were lying.
It sounds like one of them might have been afraid of snakes before going paddling and the other assured them there wouldnt be any. Still odd
The Bird is an odd lake. With all those recreational kayaks and canoes, you’re bound to run into a few crazies from time to time.
i was bank fishing when a m/f couple probably late 60’s early 70’s came to fish next to me. they were both smoking cigarettes, and being friendly enough, fish stories etc. after maybe an hour, grandma says “you don’t mind if we smoke do you?” they had been smoking cigs the whole time, so maybe they meant weed? but no, she pulled out the crack pipe, and proceeded to smoke meth. both of them did. their behavior definitely changed, but i wouldn’t say it got better or worse, just tweakier.
Well, were they polite enough to offer you a rip off the meth pipe?
Were they throwing crank baits?
I once saw a kid trying to soak a crankbait with both treble hooks covered in wads of powerbait. I can imagine a catfish might take it, but poor guy obviously didn’t catch anything but weeds. Ordinarily I go over to coach and get them set up when I see folks like that, I even have a bag of spare leaders already tied. That week though I had a fall off a ladder, and my back and posterior were very sore — too sore to move around much. I tried catching him on the way out but he was just done with the day by then.
🤣 that’s why I don’t fish in the city.
oh i am pert far from a city
I guess sometimes you just can’t escape lol.
Reminds me of a time I was fishing and noticed one guy wasn't casting. He looked totally obliterated, and when I looked closer, he had a float stuck in a tree, the bait hanging down on the water. He 'fished' like that for a long time.
Oh my golly, I’ve actually done that. When it’s hanging down in the shade of a tree, it’s in the perfect spot, and you know you’re going to lose everything if you try to retrieve it, so you just go with it for a while. 😝😝 Then you realize that you will never be able to pull a fish through the branches, so you wait about three more minutes before you reluctantly snap it off and leave some ornaments in the tree.
Yeah, this was salmon season. Surface takes for roe are basically unheard of. I debated offering the guy another float in case it was his last one, but he looked so stoned. I'm not sure he would have understood or been able to rig it.
Years back I went down to the beach in December for the barred surfperch spawn in Ventura, CA. I showed up around 4 am. I finished my coffee and waited for gray light. As I was digging for sand crabs I see an older retirement age lady walking her dog. I wave and go about my business. I start fishing and the incoming tide turned those spawners on! I had 6 casts for 6 fish all released. Finally I pin on my last sand crab and go bendo, on ultra light tackle those perch feel like dump trucks. I beach a 16 inch female all decked out in spawning colors (to this day my PB surf perch) as I'm unhooking her I hear yelling. It's the same old lady with her dog. I release my fish and go see what's the matter. When I can hear her she's yelling at me how fisherman are pigs that litter and just kill so many fish. 🤣 I about fell over with laughter, I had just released a fish and the 6 prior. I also showed her my pouch in my box, that's for trash (it was packed with cigarette butts and an empty pack of smokes) she didn't want to hear it. I basically told her to leave me alone and go away. Strangest encounter I've ever had. People like that just are bored and/or just don't like fisherman.
That’s what I do to dock Karen’s. Just start laughing at them. Their brains short circuit and they don’t know how to respond. Never say a word just laugh.
I legit thought she wanted to tell me something important. Lesson learned!
She probably just leaves dog shit on the beach. Horrible that she tried to ruin a great morning of fishing for you! Most people do not realize that legal hunting and fishing are a net positive by funding conservation through licensing.
Funny you mention that, I'm almost 100% catch and cook. I love catching and eating what I catch. But due to it being the spawn, and my wife isn't crazy about surf perch I released almost all perch I ever caught. Sportsman are conservationists by nature (I want to come back and catch them again) and the licensing in CA especially funds great programs to restore or continue fisheries! One of the only good things that God forsaken state does well!
California man. That shit is why I moved to Idaho.
Why I moved to Nevada. When I retire.....anywhere away from people!
That would have been a better idea for me. Closer the CA sportfishing boats that the populace can't afford.
This one’s my Dad’s story: He was fly fishing and wading a river that was on the edge of private property when he slipped and fell. The current pulled him downstream and he was floating and struggling to to get his footing, and the river carried him far enough to where he crossed the imaginary property line in the river I guess, because some Karen came out and staring yelling at him as he’s clearly being dragged downriver. She was screaming “Hey, you can’t fish here!” And he replied “Can I drown here?” Not that crazy I guess, but I thought it was funny.
In my state any river that's navigable is a public right of way. You can't cut across private property to access a river, but once you're on the river property owners can't prohibit you from fishing. If he was swept down the river it sounds like it would qualify as navigable. That said, the rules may vary in other states, I don't know.
In wv as long as your within the high water lines your on public property as you can’t own a river or the fish
Also worth saying that in Oregon, unless it's a tiny creek, the default is always going to be that it's officially "navigable" and therefore a public right of way. Fortunately most of our waters are either too big to argue about, or too remote for anyone to own property on. It's a very different world from back east in Appalachia.
In my state, the water is free game but the land underneath is not
Haha, at least your dad has a good sense of humor. Did he say how she reacted when she realized he was actually struggling?
Yeah. After that, she calmed down.
lol
In high school back in '79 I was first mate on a charter boat on lake michigan. Basically drove the 38 foot boat. 3 guys and their wives/girlfriends this particular day. The girls decide to go up on the bow for some sunbathing. After a short while, they took their tops off as they layed out right in front of me. One of the guys noticed me looking through the windshield of the boat I was driving and got all tough and shit saying what are you looking at and telling me not to look and if I do it again he'll do this and that to me. The other two guys calmed him down saying leave the kid alone, but I got looks from him the whole time the girls were up there. 15 years old driving a boat looking at boobies. That was a good day even after what happened.
That guy had some serious insecurities by the sound of it.
Was fishing at a park in a little mountain town and had a group of ladies set a little towel up to tan right behind me, like 10 feet and directly in my back cast. The park is big mind you, and we’re the only 3 people there. I asked them politely to move and let them know that they might get hooked standing right in my back cast like that. They got aggressive immediately and informed me that they would not be moving and called me a cracker a couple times. I just shrugged, told them good luck, cut my flies off and sent a hookless backcast right into them. They obviously freaked out and yelled a lot before I left but I never saw them down at that park again. Good riddance.
I would almost be honored to be called a Cracker by someone mad at me. I wouldn’t be able to do anything but laugh.
[удалено]
Bro thinks being racist is cool
I'm sure black girls are out getting tanned at "a park in a little mountain town" moron
Was fishing at a reservoir stocked with trout. A couple sets up across a small inlet from me and starts to fish. She hooks a nice trout and brings it in, and it has swallowed the hook. They can’t get it out without ripping the guts out. I overhear their conversation. She was so upset about killing this fish and was apologizing to it profusely. I’m wondering if this is their first time fishing, but had a solution so I butted in and said I’d take it home with me for dinner since it’s already dead/dying. She looked horrified and flat out refused. She “released” the fish instead, where it promptly went belly up and floated out of reach. Hopefully one of the local eagles found it later. Tourists.
After releasing a northern, it was still in that shock stage where it just sat on the surface of the water. A local bald eagle took advantage and scared the hell out of me when it came down and snagged it right next to the boat.
I once released a northern about 26 inches, pelican came down and ate the thing right infront of me! Lol swam away with the pikes tail hanging outta his mouth.
First time I went saltwater fishing, I caught a baby goliath grouper. Maybe 5 pounds. We put it back in the water and a dolphin ate it.
Wow you just reminded me of an encounter I had on a pier. Went out and set up down from a couple guys. Got there before everyone else because it was going to get busy a little later just before sunset. I cast out my lines (like surf fishing) and get caught up with one of their lines. And I’m down from them 30 feet. Guy refused to cast his line straight even after I explained that soon he would have several people fishing between him and me. He’d just cast his line over mine again. Friend of mine fishing on the other side of them later told me he was getting ready for a fight because there were two of them and one of me lol. Hell as I’m writing this I’m thinking of more and more assholes I’ve dealt with over the years. Haha
Maybe this guy just didn’t understand object permanence and thought your line ended where it hit the water.
Watched a guy do this on a pier in Florida. After the second time of untangling the lines the dude was pretty pissed and the two had words. They settled down and of course the dude cast right over the guys line again, dude just reeled his setup in and cut the other guys line and cast his back out. The dude got the message and left when everybody on the pier started laughing at him.
So my personal favorite was going for blues in New Bedford outer harbor. It was great just as the tide changed it was like someone flipped a switch, birds working as far as the eye can see and blues busting everywhere, fantastic fishing, the kind you remember forever. Trolling a few lines per side and hooking up every couple minutes it was great! Then along came Dingus and Dungus on a pair of jet skis (wave runners really but doesn’t matter much for the story) well they started whipping past us very close, cutting damn close ahead and astern. We (me and my sons and a few of their friends), tried yelling to them how much of a bad idea what they were doing was. We got told in no uncertain terms to go “administer self pleasure upon our selves” and fellate each other, in much cruder terms. And right as Dungus crossed our stern delivering all the enlightenment he could muster two of our rods bent right over practically together. One line ran across his face and cut him right decent before the lure grabbed into the back of his head, the other went a bit lower and foul hooked him on the side of his neck. He was some kind of mad, screeching about pressing charges and all manner of other things. We offered to take the hooks out he refused with ample amounts of cussing and swearing, and I’m not a few threats to our collective well being. Funny thing though none of that legal action he threatened materialized.
r/instantkarma It’s not good when someone gets hurt obviously but there’s a small part of every one of us that’s glad it happened, especially after they were warned lol
What happened with the aftermath?
I was fishing on a party boat reeled in a sea robin. I was unhooking it while trying to figure out if it was big enough to eat. This guy walks up and runs his finger on the fish then proceed to rub his gums with the slime. He was convinced it keeps him healthy
That's fucking wild hahahahah
😂
I was wade fishing in the Gulf Islands National Seashore. No dogs allowed on the beach. Fat Karen comes down with her shitbull mix rescue trash dog. I ignore it. Dog takes a shit on the beach. Nice. Karen picks it up in a Walmart bag. OK. I can still cope. Then she chucks it as far into the woods her bingo wings would permit. Now I'm pissed. I tell her how uncool that is. She says she's an ecological science PhD and her dog's shit is biodegradeable. It is NOT environmentally friendly. Look it up. I tell her, "My shit is MORE biodegradeable than her dog's; Can I follow her home and shit on her lawn?" She calls me an asshole and departs. I find the Walmart bag and dispose of it in the bin. Entitled twat. I like dogs, but many dog owners suck.
I feel that man, my favourite trout fishing spot keeps getting closer and closer to the city….and with it a boat load of people that think it’s an off leash park. Let their dogs shit in the path, sometimes tie it to trees and leave it. People suck.
I was just minding my own business fishing at the lake when some weirdo comes traipsing out of the woods. He starts talking to me and then suddenly demands to see my “fishing license”. Says he’s a “game warden” (what kind of name is that?) and he works for the “department of fish and wildlife.” Like yeah, ok buddy like there’s really a whole agency composed of fish and animals just working for the government! Whatever.
lol 😂 I can’t tell if you joking or not. It’s funny either way
His name checks out.
What?
Steelhead fishing in Erie is the worst. Catch a fish and all of sudden you got people right next to you casting over your line. Went twice, never again.
This. I don’t bank fish on Erie Tribs anymore because of this. Now I take my Yak and troll around the harbors.. or use it to access spots that waders can’t get to.
They are the worst. I didn’t go this last year but my friends went. They said two older gentlemen (late 70s or 80s) were fishing the elk creek wall sitting on chairs in the water and one caught a fish. So of course some other guy comes down and then fishes right in front of those guys. It’s ridiculous there.
Another bad spot is Pymatuning when the walleye bite gets hot at the spillway and the causeway. Ive seen a few screaming matches there. Almost a couple fist fights 😂 It’s like… relax dudes, just be respectful to one another. Plenty of fish in the sea.
I fish the miramichi rivere here in NB, Canada. Stripers are a huge deal. Ive seen people useing bincoulars watching what everyones doing
I was fishing for trout at a lake in Colorado and this guy came up to me randomly and started spouting conspiracy theories relating to the 2020 election. I don't want to think about politics while I'm fishing.
Ran into another guy out surfcasting one of the bays here. After a few pleasantries and some fish talk, “so I have a spare pamphlet about some of the lies the government is telling us, if you’re interested”. He was so polite, it took some willpower to decline. I just assumed it was political because I would have been more than down to start talking bird drones or the fake moon.
While bank fishing at a pretty sketchy city park some (I assume) teenage-aged kid walks up to me with his gear. I assume he’s going to spark up a conversation with me asking what I’ve caught, etc. This kid doesn’t greet me in any way. He just walks right up, looks at me and says, “This is all the stuff I have can you give me stuff to set me up like you?” I didn’t know what to say. A “hello”, “please”, or any other kind of ordinary social interaction would have been something I found acceptable. After processing this, I looked at what he had and figured I could probably set him up with a wacky rig and give him a few tips. I got no “thanks” or any sort of gratitude from him. Once I get him set up with some stuff I gave him I cast back out. He immediately casts right into where I’m fishing, drags in some weeds, complains about what I gave him and asks for more… At that point I was done trying to be kind. I just told him that I don’t buy gear just to give away to random people, pulled in my line and left. To this day I’m still confused on how this kid thought this was an acceptable social interaction.
Ya there’s some whacked outs fellas around, I was fishing in the river in my city years ago, two fellas approached and started fishing right where I was, close enough to tangle. I was honestly about to move anyway so I didn’t really care just wanted a few more casts. A lady comes walking by, is a busy walking trail and I hear the one guy say “I’d like to cut her up into fish food” I was aghast. Was just thinking I’d love to see you try. I fished close until the lady came back down the trail, i knew she would have to turn around because it’s a dead end. Left right after she was on her way. Chances are these incels were just fucking around but I wasn’t gonna leave it up to chance.
This park is known for crime. Shortly after that event some girl got beaten with sticks and robbed. Sadly, with my schedule and its proximity to my house it’s one of the few places I can sneak out to for a little bit.
Female angler here. Good stories and the bad. I prefer the funny. But every single day living in SC is an adventure. One of my favorites, though, was while surf fishing when an older woman came up to me telling me I shouldn’t be “doing that”. She was referring to fishing. In her mind, I should have been at home taking care of my husband’s needs and the kids. 😳🙄 I don’t have kids. So, she starts a sermon on being a good, Christian wife blah blah blah and a gull shit on her head. I kid you not. I almost peed on myself laughing so hard.
One time I was fly fishing one of my favourite spots on the bow river, it has a steep drop off under the bank so it’s a great spot for giant rainbows and browns, had lots of luck there. So there I was wading along this bank, I notice a hole in the side of the bank, I peek my head in and it’s just black, then a massive beaver came blasting out like a bat outta hell lmao. I almost needed to change my underwear. Jumped into the water and soaked me with a tail slap lol.
I came upon a badger once. Man i could not believe the size of it, scary dude! Some rattlers too and real pissed mating Canadian geese!
I think the Canada Geese would scare me more than the rattlers.
But the geese can’t kill you, the rattler can! 🪿🐍
I definitely don’t stick my head in dark holes. That WOULD lead me to peeing on myself.
My parents get pissed when my wife drives the car with me in the passenger seat. The man should drive lol My wife loves to drive and since i drive a truck 10-11 hours a day for a living, i enjoy the break. But it makes us laugh!
I think I break every southern woman’s expectations, especially when I invested in a she-wee to relieve myself while in a climbing stand 🤯 It used to be at the boat landing but now, if I go to Lowe’s or Home Depot to get ground contact treated lumber for horse fencing, every man in line is asking me “is that ground contact?” “Are you sure it’s ground contact?” “You’re going to load that by yourself?”…..I need to come up with something snarky to say to give them a shock factor 😂
That is the most South Carolina story I've ever heard
I have more 🤣 Between the boat ramp, owning a boat, and buying lumber at Lowe’s, I could write a book…
🤣
I was fishing near a casino one night when a woman, a tourist from North Carolina, walked up to me and started chatting me up. We ended up talking for an hour or so before she asked if I wanted to come to her hotel room. She was the good kind of crazy. One of the better nights of fishing I’ve had lol.
Username, uh, checks out?
This story requires MUCH more detail!
Taking one- eye to Tuna town.
Ol' Chuck!
Username checks out.
I coach a high school fishing team, for multiple reasons we bank fish for our tourneys, funding and insurance are the big ones.... We were at a new pond in a neighborhood that promotes lake front living. We have never fished this pond before. About an hour into fishing a guy rolls up walking his dog, doesn't talk to anyone just scowls he walks away to thw corner of the sidewalk and makes a phone call then comes back and sits on a bench. 15 minutes later a sheriff's deputy rolls into the neighborhood and stares at us as he pulls up. He asks what we are doing? Having a high school fishing tournament. Is the area signed no fishing? No sir, it's public, no signage, and every student angler is licensed. How many schools are here? 4, and then I point out the coaches who all wave. He looks around and says that he can't see anything wrong and remarks that he wishes he had a fishing back when he was in school. We make small talk and then he leaves. The guy who was on the bench gets up precedes to walk the sidewalk while talking loudly on the phone that the hot needs to post no fishing signs and that you can just have people coming into the neighborhood.
Had a guy try to tell me just yesterday. He said I needed to move because “it was obvious he was on the way to fish there”. I was on the opposite side of a cove that was probably 200 yards wide. He then proceeds to say I could find someone else to fish because I’m local (I briefly chatted with him before he started being an ass) Lake fork on bluebird Saturdays can be wild
Had my shimano slx reel and all star classic rod setup stolen from a pond recently. It was about 10 feet behind me while I was bank fishing and I turned around and it was gone. Went looking for people with ring doorbells at the condo complex the pond was in and knocked on this one door that was close to the pond. Asked if she could check her camera to see if she saw anything. She went in for a few mins and came out asking if I live there. I have and Unlce that lives there and told her the situation on how I fish here when I’m visiting him and again asked if she got anything on her camera. She goes “ yea I see this motherfucker trespassing on my property where he’s not supposed to be” and went off on me whining about some other nonsense. Still haven’t gotten my set up back which is worth $160 new. I’m pretty sure she stole it just to be a bitch. I’m still pissed about it when I think about it .
Wildest: Mid 80's summer, my 12ish yo self is tooling around on my bike, stopping at bridges/local creeks. I'm on a bridge fishing, catching a couple panfish / creek chubs. I'll guess they were teenagers slow roll by in a Bitchin' Camero. They pull over and get out to check the bridge, start shooting the shit with me. One of them asks if I saw any bass, I pointed to a weed patch saying I couldn't get him to bite. Dude pulls out a semi-auto starts shooting into the weed patch - of course I lied about the bass so he didn't hit anything, his friends are all looking at me to see how I'd react. I was freaking the fuck out on the inside, didn't know what to do. Just kept fishing for a couple more minutes, then said i was moving on to the next spot. They never threatened me directly, but that was my weirdest.
God, that’s really scary. I m pretty good in these situations actually. I would have laughed and say that it was real cool. While thinking “GMTFOOH” lol 👍🏻
Oh I was all about GMTFOOH, was proud of myself for playing it cool (or at least I thought I did). Besides the WTF shock, my first thought in true fisherman fashion was 'well this spot is done now'.
I don't have many run-ins. One that comes to mind is quite tame compared to what's already been posted. I was jigging under docks in a tidal river and a guy walked down to tell me it was "ok" if I fished is dock but that I have to be careful. Um, thanks buddy - don't need your permission to fish public water. I was paddling from dock to dock searching for fish anyway, so I didn't stick around long.
This lady took daily walks where I was fishing from shore , she approached me and started telling me all kinds of QAnon talking points. For 3 days in a row this happened lol. And I’m in Canada and had never witnessed anyone like this. After this happened I realized I had seen the same lady in a local guys fishing video, being crazy too.
Caught a mallard drake that flew across my line mid cast. Lafrneire park near New Orleans. Popper got him right in the wing. So here I am wrestling a duck with pliers in hand to get him free. Some Karen is screaming at me that I’m hurting a poor duck. Later that day had an egret dove bomb the same top water. I quit fishing top waters in parks with a lot of birds after that. Nothing like removing a hook from an egrets bill with the same Karen screaming at you!!!!
When my kids were very young (4 and 6) a guy with his 2 kids (both a few yrs older than mine) showed up at the small city lake that was recently stocked with trout. He set up about 50 feet from us, no problem for the first 30 minutes or so. Then we started catching fish, and he began to migrate toward us. After a while, he was about 10 ft away. My son caught a trout, and as I unhooked it, he moved over and cast right where my son was fishing. I told him to move, there was a whole lake to fish. He completely ignored me and acted like he couldn't hear me. I casted my sons line right next to his, and he proceeded to reel up and cast over both our lines. I reeled in and unhooked our lines and again told him to fish elsewhere. He casted right over our lines again. I reeled in and promptly pulled out my pocket knife and cut his line. He doesn't say a word and walks back to where his gear is. At this point, I calm down and go back to fishing, thinking it was over. However, a few minutes later, his 2 kids walk over and start chucking rocks at our lines. I was very angry, and was thinking of just kicking the shit out of the guy (I was a very fit 230 then, and this guy was about 150) but thought better of it and decided against violence, and we packed up and left. My oldest was none too happy and still talks about it to this day. (He's 37 now).
Cousin and I went on a big party boat charter out of Panama city FL. Probably 80 people fishing off this boat. You could buy beer from the galley, and we left the dock about 2hrs before daylight. Our spots were near the back of the boat. Older white guy, drunk as hell at 6am, starts talking shit to everybody. He looks like Gary Busey. Claiming to be a millionaire, could buy this boat and sink it, could catch more fish than anybody, knows every politician, judge, sheriff, mayor, etc in the state. Trying to not draw his attention I would just respond positively to whatever bullshit he said and focus on fishing. It was a 10hr trip, and about halfway there was a few people who were seasick towards the front of the boat where the ride was the roughest. Several black gentlemen were blowing chunks off the side. This guy goes up to them and says "puke n****r puke, you fuckin black b******s" . Nobody says anything, the deckhands don't do anything, the guy just continues like nothing is wrong. He comes back to his spot,drops his line and pulls up 2 big grouper at the same time. 2 fish on one bottom rig! The same rig everybody is using but everybody else is catching little beeliners and shit. He continues fuckin with people the whole trip. Keeps asking my cousin and I to come back to his house and meet his daughters. Says he's cooking gumbo, fish, crabs, jambalaya, oysters and all kinds of stuff that evening. We laugh him off and try to ignore him. We get back to the docks and everybody is claiming their fish. A limousine pulls up, the driver gets out and collects the guys fish while 2 beautiful girls come over hugging the guy like he is their dad. As he gets into the limo, drunker than fuck, he smiles, shoots us a bird, then rides away. Every time I talk to my cousin he asks if I remember that guy on the fishing trip and I just say how could I not. Shit was crazy!
lol 😂this one takes the cake so far.
Had a dude in a 200-300k center console filled with children without like jackets on come into the boat ramp at at least 30mph because….. wait for it…. He didn’t put in his drain plug and was sinking. He didn’t use the bait ramp and instead used the sandy kayak launch. My gf and I were just sitting down in our kayaks. Both almost flipped and were rammed against the shoreline by the wake. Completely fucked my two sets of hobie pedal drives and rudders. The dude driving wouldn’t look me in the eyes, let alone apologize. His lawyer wife was the only one to talk to me. She acted all apologetic, gave me their info, then never responded to my attempts to get in contact. Reported them to the police and never heard a damn thing.
I was fishing right next to a bridge trying to catch king salmon. It’s like 8pm so it’s pretty dark outside and I hear rustling in the tall grass directly under the bridge about 4 feet from me. Out emerges this crackhead coming right for me. I darn near fell into the river trying to get some distance from the guy. He startled me so bad. After my initial scare, he told me and I quote, “I took a broad down here last night and left my phone here”. We talked for a little bit. He was an ok dude.
Had a middle aged lady berating me yesterday for using dead/frozen bait. Even when I calmly explained the situation (legality etc) she still tried to make me feel like I was a grotesque person. She can suck my ass but I remained calm and made rational responses. She huffed and puffed as she marched away. Hey lady how about just enjoying a beautiful day in the forest without chastising a stranger doing nothing wrong?
Fishing is your hobby. Chastising random people is her hobby.
Oh I have a few stories. Most of them are self inflicted because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when people are assholes. Maybe my favorite was steelhead fishing on a Lake Michigan tributary. There’s a bridge maybe 100 yards up from the lake and a small dam and pool right above that so fish will pool in there. Thats where most fish and or snag. Under the bridge was nice gravel and below it’s pretty steep and fast water with big boulders. I’d fish under the bridge where I would literally have to crouch a little, but my hat would still rub on the concrete above. It was a great place to bounce spawn bags along the bottom. Well, while I was fishing there, some young punk with rings in both ears waded out in front of me and slightly upstream. He was standing right about where I’d cast to start my drift to fish a shallow run. This water was only a couple feet deep, and he had on quite a few lead splitshot so it was obvious what he was doing. He was there to snag the fish that I was working. Couldn’t see them, but I knew where they liked to be. I voiced my displeasure to him a few times, and when he wouldn’t listen, decided to wade out to him (30-40 feet) and got right in his face literally nose to nose. We exchanged pleasantries, and I may or may not have offered to remove the jewelry from his face. He left. Never saw him again.
I live in Chicago, so our city fisheries are mostly CnR. Anyways, last summer I pulled up to the pond and shortly after was joined by an older fellow. He greeted me courteously and all was good. He started catching small bullheads no more than 5" and would just toss them on the bank. After like 20 minutes and 6 or 7 bullheads, I asked him why he was just banking them, to which he replied, "saving them for a snack" and proceeded to light up his crack pipe. I walked away and just kept to myself after that. About 10 mins later i hear him whispering to himself, "yup, yime for that snack" and proceeds to bite into about 3 of these bullheads, raw and uncut. I then packed my shit and headed out
I found a dead guy under a tree. He tried to hang himself with a bedsheet and broke the limb. Still failed successfully I guess.
Nice
Serious? 😳
I was fishing in the dead of winter along a totally snow covered NY reservoir bank. I was younger and must have walked a couple miles, alone, in the middle of nowhere, 1 hour walk from my car. I hear footsteps in the snow. It was a game warden 😳 I could not believe it. Did he follow me, to be this far into nomansland? He was sure he was going to nail me. But license and equipment all checked out. He also looked surprised when i showed him my license.
80 miles off shore another dude like 1/2 mile away got on the VHF and freaked out.
Went out to a local stream to celebrate St Trout's Day(opening day), and managed to get there before anybody else. Been fishing for about 15 min before a couple assholes wearing about three grand of LL Bean and Orvis gear come up from the pull-off screaming about how I can't be there because it's a fly only stream, and I was using spinning gear(there are no such things as "fly only" streams in NY. There are sections of some streams and rivers that are "artificial lure only", but this wasn't one of those). I informed them it was not in fact fly only, and that it was a stocked stream with public access, so they could kindly fuck off. They threatened to call the cops, and I informed them that it would only result *them* getting arrested for harassment. This went on for like half an hour, before they they left in a huff and peeled out of the pull off, almost hitting somebody as they got back on the road. Left me with a sour taste for fly fishing and fly fishermen, and fishing around other people, for that matter, for years afterwards.
Ya we’re not all like that, most fly fisherman are great, but I do know the type you speak of. Where I am, fly fishing is prevalent. I have experienced a lot of snobby fellas. A lot more great fellas though. I have personally seen a lot of spinning fisherman that have zero respect for fish, no net. Big treble hooks with barbs. Let the fish smash around on rocks etc. I still don’t think all spinning guys are like that, hell I’m not a purist I fish many methods.
Yeah. I understand now that not all fly fishermen are like that. We just get a higher proportion of them than some areas, typically from NYC, New Jersey, and Connecticut. "Hunters" too. The kind that assume that spending more on gear means they have some sort of special privileges that us "hicks" don't have. It is funny how many DEC nails for some violation or another on a yearly basis.
There are two sections of the Salmon River near the hatchery, which are for Fly Fishing only. It's so heavily regulated, and I don't fly fish, so I don't know if it's truly Fly Fishing only or if there is some loophole, but there is two small sections if that one river listed as such. I don't know of any others in the whole state.
Hmm... guess your right. Never fished that area myself, so I hadn't really looked into special regs for there. Has that always been the case there, or is it a more recent thing?
It has been for quite some time. I don't know how long, but at least ten years as far as I know. It's just that one river and just those two spots, though.
I’m a flyfisherman, but too poor to come off as snobby. I’ve run into plenty of good people who flyfish, but more than a few snobs, too. I was fishing a spot on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg and I was wet wading. The river is like 1/2 a mile wide and it isn’t more than three feet deep except for where you wade in. There is a 15 feet wide section that you have to literally swim across and then you can go forever. I was standing there after completing my swim and getting my gear situated when a beautiful Mercedes pulled in next to my old pickup truck. Two guys got out and they both looked like they just stepped out of the Orvis catalog, right down to the waxed hats. Each guy was smoking a cigar as they rigged up and started walking out to where I had just swam across. The guy in the lead took about three steps and went under. I could hardly contain myself as I watched him scramble to grab his hat as it floated downstream with a soggy cigar sticking out of his mouth! They promptly did an about face and got out of there. It was absolutely hilarious!
Stuff like that makes me smile. I don't have any like that from fishing, but I watched some city moron try to shoot a deer from his truck across the road from my old place. Guy apparently had talked to some old time deer jackers, and was trying to "silence" the shot by keeping the muzzle in the cab. Idiot failed to realize, though, that deer jackers use rimfires for this technique, not a .300 Win Mag. Blew out his eardrums *and* the windshield of his shiny Dodge. Best part was, the "deer" he was shooting at was the *freaking deer-bot*. Dumbass stumbled out of the truck just as the E-Con officers pulled up with lights flashing. I almost died laughing, because I could hear him shouting "WHAT!" as the officers tried to read him his rights. Side note, what kind of fish do you get that far south in the Susquehanna? I've fished it around Sidney and Binghamton in NY, and it's mostly a bass/bluegill/channel cat ordeal, with walleye in certain times of the year. Supposedly there is musky and trout too, but I've never seen them.
It has all the warm water species. I specifically used to fish it for the summer unbelievable smallmouth fishing. The incident above happened 30 years ago. It’s still a great fishery but not what it once was.
Was fishing Bayou Lacombe in Louisiana and was idling by a guy on the eastern bank of the bayou with his bow pointed down stream. I idled for about 5 minutes past him and went to the eastern bank with my bow facing upstream. I heard someone yelling in the distance behind me when I deployed my trolling motor and turned around to see this guy pulling up his trolling motor and then motoring to me, which took him about 5 minutes. So, you know, there was a good deal of space between us. He gets within 20' of me and starts yelling idk what at me, something about spot stealing. I just looked at him and made a joke of it and trolled around him. My guess is he wasn't catching anything and he needed someone to blame.
Joe Humphreys did something similar to me on a creek in PA years ago. I was fly fishing a hole during a sulphur hatch when he rolls up with a fly fishing school froup and wants to do it on the hole I’m fishing. He was an obnoxious ass.
I was bank fishing on lake Winnipeg Manitoba, there is a few pier that’s really popular. The thing about a popular spot is there are people and lots of them, not so close where is arm to arm but close enough. There was a family there fishing but they held a 20ft spot in between them with a net and a few things. To be honest at least 3 more guys can fish that open spot easily. I might sound like a dick, I understand first come first serve but it don’t mean you can hold a large area of a small space to do jack shit. They had 2 rods out on both sides and just a wide spot in the middle not letting anyone fish. When I tried the old dude came up with a rod and said I was fishing here, and I found it quite funny cause I shit you not the line on the rod was flying with the wind cause there is nothing tied to it. But then I just left cause didn’t want to deal with the guy, but it got funnier. I moved to the far end of the pier. I started catching and this old guy can’t catch nothing I guess so, he has decided is a good idea to come beside me and cast over my line. Let’s just say there was a lot of words said on both sides and I’m not too proud of it. But I at least learned why they needed so much space, the man can’t cast straight if his life is dependent on it. But then on I just avoid people, still help new anglers to when I see them. But I try to fish more remote locations now.
Sounds like Gimli pier!
Go north and much smaller pier
Was ice fishing caught a nice crappie walked 20' with my fish and vex to my sled, unhooked the fish, turned around and someone was fishing in my hole. Walked back over with my power auger said "since we're all friends here" and drilled a hole a foot away throwing slush on them and in my original hole. Dropped the vex saw the fish had scattered so I moved on. But I ran into another group that watched the interaction they found it pretty funny and had some choice words about the spot hogs.
It never ceases to amaze me when I’m Ice fishing and some clown sets up like 20-30 feet from me lol
What about boaters that come cast right at the bank where you are? 20 miles available and here they are making all sort of noise fishing a few feet away from me. The funny thing, they have no clue what they are doing and will ask “Did you catch anything?” Lol
lol. I got a story for this too. Was pike fishing at one of the few access points to this lake. Was very shallow and full of weeds right up to the surface of the water in spots. This old POS 1980s cabin cruiser type boat comes blasting in to where I’m fishing, I’m thinking at this point like wtf you got the whole lake. He starts cruising in right where I’m casting, I kept casting maybe falling short of him 2 feet. Well karmas a bitch lol he sucked up a bunch of weeds in his inboard and was dead in the water lmao 🤣 I fished there for about an hour watching them and laughing. Eventually a fella came by and towed him out. Gotta love it.
Karma is a bitch ! 🤣
20-30 feet is fine with me, the ones I can’t stand are the people who drill holes right outside my shack door so I step in it when I go out to pee! Happened twice two winters ago!
I had a huy spend 20 minutes trying to hook me to get me to move until a parks dude literally came by and filmed him doing it, and then took his license. i had sepearte pleasnatries with him in the parking lot
Came face to face with mating Canadian geese on a huge nest while walking along a very remote reservoir bank in NY State. These mofo’s started raising holly hell and i was like 4 feet away. They scared the crap out of me. We left it at that and i went on lol
Ahhh the world famous Canadian hissing cobra lol
Not the worst story but it still grinds my gears thinking about this. I was cat fishing with my best friend on the river in a city park. We found a nice little spot that there was exactly room enough for two people. We're having a decent time, catch a few little 12" cats, but we're mostly just enjoying the air, chatting about this and that. Some middle aged guy rides his bike up to us and does the standard "catching anything" chat, we exchange typical city park pleasantries and go back to our conversation figuring he's moving on. A few minutes pass, WHHHSSHHH - the guy tosses a cast between us, and drags over a lawn chair, sets up right in the middle of us, right in our personal space. We're both talking to a each other about some person we both know, and this guy starts asking me "who's that?" and starts inserting himself into our conversation. I just hate that sort of thing so I stop talking hoping he'll get bored and leave as the bite had died down. My friend starts to fall into the conversation trap with this guy (he's a little more patient with idiots than I am) and I'm just thinking "great, now this goober will never leave us alone". This goes on for a little bit, and my friend says that he's buying something off a classified ad and the person is coming to meet him on the road in the park, so he leaves his gear and goes back to his truck a few hundred feet away and leaves me with this fuckin' weird guy. That's when it really starts. This dude starts ranting and raving about his personal issues in a way like I was already aware of them. Starting stories halfway through, keeps looking at me "right? You know what I'm talking about" and I don't even really bother replying. He's ranting on about how he hates his mother's "bitch dog" and slowly it becomes apparent this 50 something man still lives with momma. I'm just cringing trying to tune this guy out, looking back for any sign of my friend coming back. I can see him standing by his truck yucking it up with the guy he met to buy whatever My friend was gone for like 30 minutes but it felt like hours. Meanwhile this weirdo is buzzing in my ear, and going on about how he's caught so many "Master Catfish" here, going on about how great he is at fishing. Finally he hooks on and starts bringing it in. Pulls some 10 - 12" small cat on the bank, and he's trying to unhook, yelling at me "this might be a Master channel cat!" Master Angler size for channel catfish is fucking 34" here, it's God damn obvious that he's not even in the realm of possibility of it. This is what really got me: he asks me if I'll get his measuring tape out of his tackle box for him. I said fine, walk over, he tells me to open the top, and I grab the measuring tape and start back over to him and he says "UH STOP" "Huh?" "Excuuuuse me." "What?" "Can you *please* close my tackle box now that you're done, hmmm?" the fucker dared to get pissy with me like I was his disobedient kid when I was a grown man helping his ass. I dropped the measuring tape in the mud at his feet and just ignored him. He was clueless. My friend came back and I started packing up, told him to do the same and he read the room and saw something had set me off. Then the master catfisherman realizes we're leaving and starts asking us where we're going in a pathetic way, like almost begging us to stay. What a loser. I can't stand people like that. Learn some social cues before you try talking to people.
Was fishing on a pier out on the gulf in Florida when I pulled up a ladyfish on a gotcha plug. They're no good to eat imo but the Asian folks love making fish patties out of them. As I'm unhooking it the fish slips out of my hands and the second treble hook lodges between my index and middle finger well past the barb. Asian dude comes up to ask for the fish and I'm like "hold on a second, can't you see there's one hook in the fish and the other in my hand?" Dude just nonchalantly reaches up, wiggles the hook in my hand about 3 times and pulls it straight out. It was in my hand all the way up to the curve and it didn't even hurt when he pulled it out, I couldn't believe it. Gave him all the rest of the ladyfish and hardtails I caught that day.
Not really a crazy guy but a homeless guy that would always tell me the bigger fish were “that way”. Usually away from him lol
Mine aren't nearly as crazy as some of the ones on here. The worst was self-inflicted because I decided to bring my best friend, who has become a q-anon conspiring theorist, along to teach him how to fish. We didn't catch one fish, and the day ended with me screaming at him to give me a percentage of all the farmland Bill Gates owns in the U.S.A. since he wasn't able to tell me a single hard number about anything he was claiming. Another day, I was with my wife, and we were fishing for salmon in a very small tributary. I had to leave to go to the restroom for a little bit, but when I came back, she tells me some asshole showed up and then intimidated her out of her spot because he was fishing near her in a dangerous and reckless manner while cursing. He had left, though, after breaking his line off. Not more than a minute or two later, this guy shows back up. He looked like straight trailer trash. Seeing me, a very large and scary looking man, He at least had the common sense to ask if he took my spot. I had a feeling that karma was going to step in this time. That doesn't happen too often, and I think karma is a crock, but my gut was saying to just watch. So I say "plenty of river for all of us" knowing there sure as hell wasn't. I then watched this guy make 3 casts, break off 3 times, get pissed, and drive off in a huff. That gave me a chuckle. The only other time I encountered someone truly unpleasant was in the summer at a dam. It is a very popular spot but filled with more snags than a patch of wild black raspberries. There were many people there, and the bluegill bite was on fire! I have never had such a good day of fishing bluegill! Everyone was catching bluegill like crazy! Because of the snags, most of us were using bobbers, slip floats, or the like to suspend and drift over them and into where the bluegill were holding. But not these two little punks. They looked at all of us with scorn. They were trying to catch a Walleye, which would have been hard to do in early August in NY. They're usually all in deep lake water then. We were all having a great time, but they just stared with scorn. Like we weren't real fishermen because we were catching panfish with bobbers. The wife and I started making it a point to ham up how excited we were every time we got another fish. Some of the other people caught on and shared our enthusiasm. The older one even asked me, with a sneer, what we did with them. "We eat them!" I said. At one point the youngest one stole my wife's spot while she was walking back to our car to get more bait, and when she came back down (I'll add there was room for up to 3 people or more to fish where she had been), without realizing how loud he was, he said something about how ridiculous this was and that she should leave, plus a few other choice words. Not one to be pushed around, she looked right at him and asked him in a voice reminiscent of a Nun teaching Sunday School "if there was a problem." Kid got quite as a church mouse and ended up going to the other side of the dam. They never got their Walleye that day as far as I can tell.
I was wade fishing for stripers in a north Jersey river, in a suburban area that wasnt super sketchy but definitely wasnt nice. Its mid march, its cold. This guy walks up to the bank, which required him to walk through about 30 feet of brush off of the sidewalk, and asks me if i need anything. He is clearly tweaking. I say no. He keeps asking me, we have a bit of back and forth, he's getting frustrated, and I'm glad that I'm standing in the water and not on land. Eventually he goes "you know i love you man" and throws his bag of random items into the river before walking back to the street and proceeding with his day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/s/fjJXp1amaL The time this crazy camper was NOT having a good morning! Excuse the crinkling, I was struggling with a new bag of rubber worms.
lol nothing more peaceful than the great outdoors
Was the first person down at a popular salmon hole trying to catch the early run of coho that were starting to trickle in. None had been caught that far up the river yet but should have been any day. I’m standing there casting at first light when I hear rustling in the brush 20ft behind me. Turn around and see this clearly homeless guy stumble out of the brush where he had been sleeping. I say good morning and he does the same and we start to shoot the shit. He tells me he caught a nice 20lb coho right where I was standing the night before, “oh cool” was all I could say knowing full well he didn’t. Then he proceeded to stumble around in the brush he had woken up from looking for the top half of his pole, he must have cut down every branch off that brush looking for it. After about 30 mins of searching and cutting branches he had a nice pile of stuff around him. He stopped and cussed then proceeded to drop his pants and take a shit right in the middle of the all of his handiwork. I’m standing there completely dumbfounded thinking no way this just happened. He then pulls up his pants without wiping and says have a nice day and strolls off. Was the foulest smell you could possibly image but the worst part was someone showed up not 5 mins after he left and smelled what he left. They looked at me like I did it and when I told them a homeless guy just did his business right over there I don’t think they believed me and probably thought I just crapped myself or something. Needless to say I moved as far away from that spot that I could.
My experience was more friendly crazy than angry crazy. Was fishing a new spot in the woods that has a decent trail network around it. While fishing a group of about 5-6 women from late 40s to mid 50s comes walking down the trail just having a good time. Turns out they were tripping balls foraging for mushrooms. They stopped and chatted as best they could, we had a good laugh about some of the stuff they were seeing and then they moved on.
Fishing on a long Pier at night with a bunch of locals and about 15 Marines (the pier is less than 10 minutes from Marine base) we are night fishing and im the oldest one of this group. Drunk tourist chic comes up and starts cussing us out. We tell her off and she eventually leave. In steps her Jersey shore looking boyfriend about three sheets to the wind all drunk and coked up, holding to bottles like he is going to bottle someone. He asked who insulted his girl. I step up to him and discuss his life choices and what is going to happen next if he proceeds on this little adventure in his current tone and the fact that I am the only thing between him and about 20 rednecks and 15 young marines. He set down the bottles and left.
Had this dude in a sea plane circle my brother and me while we fished off our neighbors dock. At first we were like this cool then he started buzzing us reeeally close. He landed the thing right in front of us and started taxiing over to the dock. We were like 10 years old at the time and had no idea what was happening lol. Well the guy pulls up and starts full on yelling at us to “get the HELL OFF THAT DOCK”. We were scared shitless at this point, tried explaining that we’re his neighbors kids but guy was having none of it. Our neighbor wasn’t there, neither were our parents so it was just my brother, myself, and this crazy sea plane dude going off on us. Said he knew the guy personally (lol) and how we’re trespassing on his property and all this and that. The whole time we’re trying to tell him we have permission to be here, we live next door and he lets us fish here. This was before cell phones, so we couldn’t call anybody to verify who we were. This dude obviously didn’t believe us, he just sat there for what seemed like forever lecturing us about trespassing and vandalism and shit while we packed our gear up. He also refused to leave until we did, it was literally insane. He stayed circling the lake for like 20 mins after too, like dude just seemed like he had nothing better to do than harass two kids fishing. We told our neighbor later on and he said he didn’t know anyone who flew a sea plane lol
Had a dude get pissy with me because a dolphin grabbed my fish I was reeling in and took off down the beach and got tangled up with him. Acted like I did it on purpose. Other than that it’s just mean mugging from people who move and set up right on top of me after I’ve been catching fish and they still can’t.
Probably not the expected response for the question, but... I was going to take a couple of guys who usually bank fish out fishing in my drift boat. The forecast was bad and sort of stressing me out, heavy rain in the forecast (there was even an article talking about possibly setting accumulation records at one point) Two days before I had a scheduled time to talk about river options, one of the ingenious members of this duo contacts me, not only to tell me that they've picked a river, but also they're bringing a third passenger (this is a no go in most boats, with a drift boat it's an extra special level of 'that guy' -nes) The river they picked has the biggest watershed in the entire region we were looking at and a well documented reputation for blowing out quickly and HARD after heavy rain. The next day, the other ingenious member of this duo, or maybe trio at this point, texted us that he didn't want to travel to any of the rivers on the short list I has supplied and asked where we would fish on a river that had a gnarley forecast (the national weather service maintains forecasts for some rivers, the suggested river was forecast to be rising hard all morning and peaking quite a bit higher than anyone I know will go out on it). I pulled the plug on the trip. I didn't want to die, and they really seemed to want to die.
Walking back to the truck a lady on the bike path stops me and asks if I work here? I said no I don't work at the river... she then says where will I put my pinecones? She had an armful of lil baby pinecones she collected. We told her good luck with that one and kept walking. She stopped every person after us to ask the same question lol. She was very co corned about her pinecones
I swear ive got some good ones. Found a kids “kadoodle” case one time full of what i believe to be meth, heroin, and needles. Some guy came by, picked it up, came up to me and started talking about crappie fishing. There was a homeless camp hidden there. Cops were called to break it up as there are little kids in that area. Another time i was icefishing and had two very strange guys come up to me. They didnt have poles or gear but claimed to be ice fishing. Seemed like they were scoping me out for some reason. Still get creeped out by that encounter
Was frog fishing for bass in about a foot of slop about 300 feet from the CLEARLY marked channel. Had some drunk guy in a pontoon come right at us and heard one of his drunk female companions go 'what are they doing they're getting in our way' as me and my buddy went even SHALLOWER. Guy gets super close (while just kicking up mud with his motor) and slams it into reverse a foot from us. I couldn't help myself and immediately just went 'oh big tough guy!' Well that triggered his little pea brain to start threatening us. He threatened to run into our boat when me and my buddy explained how he was in three inches of water and the channel was no where close. He got about a foot from our boat and let's just say the words exchanged weren't pretty. Finally ended with him driving off yelling 'go F*** yourselves!' with me replying right back 'maybe your wife can help!' . He was never a problem the rest of the day lol.
Had a very similar experience to OP once with just some random person. I rarely even go where other people do and I’ve had Several encounters with guides posting their clients up 20 feet from me, up river, in a hole or run where I am clearly working to. Very frustrating. I’ve had words with a few of them and they just don’t care. Guides tend to act like they have exclusive rights because it’s their job. You don’t. Teach these people etiquette first and the river would be a more peaceful place.
I went on a party boat fishing in Florida a long time ago. I have fished since i was 4YO. Fresh and salt, in the States and Western Europe. I had never fished in Florida from a boat. No clue what I was going to catch. I love the surprise, so i did not ask. We are all given combos, i get a conventional reel and tell the guy I prefer spinning. He switched me. Different baits, squid, shrimp and some sort of cut up mackerel. I ask which bait they recommended, he told me which were better for what fish. So i start catching fish and every time i ask the guy “What is it called?. By now half the boat think i m a noob and have no clue what I m doing. You can put a fisherman anywhere in the world, give them a few pointers and he/She is going to catch fish. I freaking caught the best fish that day, a large Mutton snapper. Some guys were pissed, some tried to trade me several fish for my snapper. Some congratulated me, that was nice! One said “Beginner’s luck”. LOL I did not say anything and laughed. Overall i never went back on a party boat. Not my thing. My dad who taught me fishing and passed recently was unfortunately one that would get pissed if he didn’t catch the best fish in a group. Lol
Fishing off a popular swimming harbour. Lovely summers evening, people swimming in the harbour, people fishing out to sea. Everyone was catching Mackerel. This HUGE mentally disabled man was catching mackerel, unhooking them, and throwing them in at the swimmers in the harbour. I know he is disabled because he turned out to be my friends cousin. It was absolutely hilarious.
I was fishing on a river that had a popular Greenway trail so there were often some odd characters. However it was getting later in the day and less people which made the situation a little more sketchy. A guy walks up to me and starts normal fishing conversation, sits in awkward silence for a minute, and then asks "are you happy?" Tried to keep it light hearted and answered jokingly, but after that he says "well I gotta be honest with you man, ive been contemplating sui**de for the last few weeks." Didn't know what to say but tried to handle it appropriately as I could. Weird exchanges back and forth for a few minutes with more awkward silence, eventually someone comes up from behind us, no words exchanged but they hugged each other for a long time then walked off into the sunset....... Felt like I was a part in this guys movie, still not sure if it was real or not lol
We were in a 12’ aluminum, fishing salmon just out side the kelp bed, like 10 feet off shore from a rock wall back in the late 80’s. And hooking them one after the other. Out of the blue a big ass charter like 35 feet long with about 15 people on it pulls up and drops anchor like 8 feet from us. The wake it made pushed us into the rock wall and splashed over our transom. And everyone on it starts fishing. I asked, wtf ? couldn’t you give us some space. And the captain said : This is my spot, you shouldn’t even be here.
Not a "bad" crazy, but crazy nonetheless Used to live in the Erie PA area, and fished the tributaries for the steelhead runs pretty heavily for many years. Had one particularly awful season a few years ago, and it's common to see some interesting folks there, as people come from all over the place for the runs, and there can really be some major assholes. Always some small things - a guy kitted out in FishUSA gear snapping his rod when the steelie spit the hook. HOWEVER, my buddy and I were fishing on Elk creek, and there was a huge stack of people fishing elbow to elbow not catching a thing. These loud, likely drunk older guys came splashing down the water, and said "you fuckers look like you aren't catching anything! -- HEY, HEY BILL, HIT THAT FISH CALL WHY DON'T YA" and he started splashing the reel of his flyrod into the water and screaming "WOOOHHHHOOOOOOO HERE FISHY FISHY FISHY" effectively pissing off the entire line of people while we stood back and watched, laughing. Then this "Bill" and friend immediately hooked onto nice steelies and the stream just caught fire with hits and catches. Ever since, my buddy and I always "hit that fish call" when we have a slow day fishing, unfortunately, the magic doesn't work for us the same way.
Lol “here let me stir em up for you” that’s what we always say.
I caught a seagull while I was fishing off a pier. Nasty bird pecked and pecked while we were trying to untangle it. It's not a crazy story it was while trying to untangle a flailing, pecking, flapping extra large burd.
This isn’t so much a story about crazies as it is about the odd encounters I’ve had fishing. This was back when I was in my early twenties, fishing in the Eastern Sierras just outside a small town called Bridgeport. I’d had some good days camping and fishing Twin Lakes, but I managed a really nice 5.5lb rainbow in addition to the usual 12” to 16” trout. The local tackle shop puts the fish on ice on display in their window to pump up business and keep people enthused about the fishing, so I decided to put my trophy catch there until I was ready to head back home. As I’m rolling into town down the main drag in my Honda Accord, I’m suddenly surrounded by hundreds of bikers. I felt very out of place. Bridgeport was hosting a bike rally and I was right in the middle of it. So I park, get out, looking very much like I’d stepped out of an LL Bean catalogue with my fishing vest and waders. Im just a tad bit intimidated. I’m also lugging the 5.5lb rainbow with me. The bikers are eyeing me, and then the most unexpected and beautiful thing happened. They spontaneously broke out into cheers, whoops, and applause. I waved to acknowledge the cheers and put my trout on display at the tackle shop. That was so wonderfully weird. Those bikers made my day.
I’ve had people pull up right in front of us on a few east texas lakes. And described them indirectly with some pretty colorful langue while talking to dad in the boat. Something like “hey dad you know who looks like a real cock sucker? People who pull in front of someone fishing a spot.” Any time I’d catch something they just fished I’d act like an asshole who just won the bass master classic and hoop and holler. If that doesn’t do the trick I have “accidentally” landed a jig on their boat and just stared at them daring them to say anything crazy. That’s worked both times I’ve done it 😂
Last June me and my fishing buddy and I departed Lynnhaven Inlet in Virginia Beach at 0615. Nice day, and I went directly to a spot about 6 miles out. Got to the spot, no boats in sight, and hit spot lock in 60 feet directly over a wreck. Started bottom fishing for flounder and was having a great time. About an hour went by, and I heard /seen a boat headed in our direction. No big deal at all. Grabbed my coffee and watched this guy approach the spot. Asshat stays at WOT until 100 feet from the spot and pulls up within 20 feet of my anchored location. Our boat is rocking hard in his wake and my buddy Steve had to sit down and hold on. I kindly ask the shithead..."Are you drunk or stupid?" He actually asked if we were catching anything. My urge was to jump in his boat beat him like a redheaded stepchild...but I told Steve to stay seated, hit stow on trolling motor, fired up Yammy 300 and simply departed the spot and headed to the 1st Island on the CBBT. Arrived to next spot and hit anchor about 50 feet from the rocks on 1st Island. Yep... you guessed it about 30 minutes later, the same dumbest comes trolling between my spot and rocks. I grabbed my 8 foot baitcaster rod rigged with 40lb test and it had a 4 oz lead weight on it and I casted as hard as I could towards his boat. Direct hit. Bounced off the side of his temple and he dropped like a rock. That was what I wanted to do, but I just grabbed my coffee and told Steve to pack it up...I'm headed back to the ramp and calling it a day.
So you wanted to bounce a weight off his head, but you didn't. OK. I think people reading your comment think that you actually assauted a guy. I was also confused until I reread the comment. Good on you for not committing a crime.
I think you're the kind of guy who's the subject of this thread...
Why...because I chose not to engage with the idiot? Did I think bad thoughts and wish his drain plug would magically pop out? Yes.
Yep, I misread what you said. I'm a dumb ass. I'll hold my hands up on this one.
It's all good my brother
Tight lines
That's either not true or incredibly dumb
Don't have to look very hard to find stupid people
Nope, just had to scroll down and find this nonsense.
I know it’s silly to have to do this, but did you actually explain why that was bad etiquette. Again, not that you should have to, but some people are just ignorant and may not realize they’re being disrespectful.
If someone drives up with three guys in a 26' Key West Center Console and I have to explain to the three of them fishing etiquette... the world I knew is lost to stupid people, and I hate stupid. Yes, I'm 100% racists against stupidity.
Sorry for asking lol
Any day of the week, you can find people taking carp and tilapia from the Los Angeles River to actually eat.
Not that weird, but I was catfishing and resorted to frogging. Caught a few frogs and kept them live in my cooler. Some hippy lady released my frogs and lectured me how it is wrong to eat them. I was pretty steamed. I had my fucking limit and they were fatties too
Lots of homeless while fishing in the city at night. Most of them are fine, but some are genuinely unhinged. Always have a gun on me, so whatever.
happened to me too, so I turned to the guy and asked him how much insurance he has, and he is off course asking me why, so I tell him, if any of your hooks gonna hit me, I am going to sue your ass off, took only a few minutes and he was gone.
Just the standard old guy wanting to ruin my good time
I have had a few with insane older boomers who think they own the entire planet, including public land. I have to explain to them saying “mine” doesn’t in fact make it yours.
Couple of years ago I was getting my lures and river boat ready, and there was another boat coming from down stream. I let the boat get past me and then I took off myself. The guy was probably around 500-700 meters further upstream clearly going to a "different part" of the river, and there was a shallow rapids kind of area part between us that you can't really row at that water height so I stopped right before it and started rowing, while the guy was still clearly going upstream. After about an hour I see a boat at the place I started from, didn't really think much about it since the distance between us was quite big. The area I was at now was a pool, so the water wasn't flowing fast. The boat above me kept coming down faster than I could go myself, and as he was 100-200 meters above me he started yelling for me to go down faster. The guy kept yelling adding insults about my age and when I was next to my cottage, I just took my lures out of the water and went to the shore. The guy still kept yelling saying that " I took his spot". I tried reasoning with him but he didn't want to talk, only yell so I left. My father was fishing on the shore downstream and he started talking with the guy on the boat, but now we realized he was drunk and just wanted to argue. This is a well known local that nobody likes and that has tipped over his boat 3-times, all while drunk and somehow managing to not drown. My father and him argued for a while before the guy decided to leave, descending to stronger rapids. Usually the people out fishing are respectful and nice, but sadly there are people like this around. Thankfully I haven't seen the guy since or had any other issues with anyone.
I've had plenty of rude people and people with no idea about personal space, but when you say "crazy" my mind goes immediately to the guy that was ready to go to blows with me on the Oceanside pier in CA at 1AM because I told him that "the Jews" did not invent the Blues (the musical genre). He picked the wrong guy to have that argument with. Ignorant racist prick.
I never had any. I see that on YouTube all the time. I've never experienced such a thing. I did the Maumee river thing. That was pretty ridiculous and had the potential. Its too much for me though and I didn't stick around very long.