Cityfisher wrote:So, last Saturday night my buddy and I and his 2 boys (19 and 20) went and fished some canals over on Bolivar. .... And why should this guy buy lights and put them in public waters and get mad if someone fishes them??? Kinda silly really. But again, should I be more understanding of his point of view? Or do you think that this person was just being an unreasonable jerk?
To be honest with you, I don't even want to bother with fishing peoples dock lights anymore if I am going to be harrassed every time I go out.
My family has had a house on the end of a canal in Pirate’s Cove since 1983. We’ve got lights in the water and don’t usually mind a kayaker fishing over them when we aren’t out there. But if we are out on our deck, even if we are not fishing, there is a good chance we are watching the fish that the lights and electricity we paid for attracted, and we really don’t want some random kayaker scaring them off.
A lot of us have those lights out not just, or even primarily, to fish over, we like to stand out on our deck on a nice summer evening and just watch the fish. And when some kayaker paddles up without so much as a “by your leave” and starts fishing over those lights, he usually ends up chasing the fish we were watching off, and they don’t usually come back until quite a while after he has paddled off. Especially if he catches one, that really scares the rest off for a while. So he’s spoilt our evening’s entertainment. That we’ve paid for.
Our resentment when someone does is even a little more deep-seated than that, and so while I probably wouldn’t have acted like that homeowner you ran into, I can understand a little where he might be coming from, and maybe explain it to you here.
I can’t tell you how many times we have looked out to see a stranger standing in our yard or even on our dock fishing. And one night we were all sitting out on the deck over our boathouse having some afterdinner drinks when a guy in his fifties drives through our yard all the way to the bulkhead and jumps out and starts fishing. We ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and he tries to lie and say it’s public property and he has the right to fish it and has done so for years.
There is an attitude some people take when they are in our neighborhood, I don’t know if a lot of them are renters or using a friend’s house or what, but they don’t seem to see a neighborhood full of vacation homes as a “real” neighborhood, so I guess they think people don’t “really” own the houses, so every house is “everyone’s” and fair game to use. People cut through our yard all the time, and I don’t just mean a few feet around a corner, and I don’t just mean on foot. We have a big corner lot, and have had several people drive those stupid golf carts diagonally a hundred feet or more through the middle of our yard, leaving big ruts in the yard. We’ve had the people who rarely use their house across the street from ours apart from the usual summer holiday weekends throw enormous parties and their guests use our yard as a parking lot, which ends up destroying the sprinkler system. I called the cops, and at first the cop said “well you know, they are allowed to park on the street with the tires from one side of the car on the grass”, and I pointed at all the cars with all four tires on our grass, and he said “okay, I’ll go tell them to move.”
So, homeowners who have dealt with years of inconsiderate jagoffs treating their property like a public fairground end up getting a mite touchy about people just assuming its okay to benefit from their property without asking. And when someone else pays for lights, pays for the electricity, and you fish over those lights that wouldn’t be there otherwise, you are benefiting from their property.
So, my advice is, if you want to be considerate, choose your house carefully. Go for the houses that don’t seem to be occupied at all that weekend, or at least ones that don’t seem to have a lot of activity going on. Especially avoid the ones with people out on the deck. Or ask “do you mind if I fish over your lights?” and if they say they’d rather you not, then politely move on and fish somewhere else. If someone asked nicely like that, even if I was watching the fish I'd probably say "no problem" and even point out the big ones to them from my vantage point and let them know if their casts are getting close or not.
It's never a bad idea to have that guy with the sweet canal lights and a new private launch point owe me one.
) but do you have any published secondary sources of someone being cited for standing on his private dock and yelling at a fisherman and stamping his feet? I'd be very interested to read them.