My girlfriend and I were fishing this area for about an hour (yellow), she was standing on the edge of the ditch. Then this guy shows up and starts fishing about 30 feet to the right of us and starts casting toward our lines. I thought that was a little close but didn’t say anything, however after about 10 minutes of getting closer and closer to us he ends up standing on the other side of the ditch (red). At this point he is about 5 feet away from my girlfriend and casting over where she was casting, he was closer to her than I was. This is when I asked him calmly if he could give her some room and move over a little bit. He got pretty upset and said he always does this to people at the lake and no one ever says anything and points out that’s there a little ditch in between the two of them. I told him I was just trying to get my girlfriend on a fish and that she needs a little bit more room to cast and that I didn’t mind if he just went back to where he started fishing at. I also pointed out that every other fisherman out there was very respectful about how much distance they gave the next fisherman, it wasn’t too busy. I think the closest person aside from him was about 200 feet away from us. But he was very defensive and clearly very mad about my request and stepped about 5 feet to the side and continued fishing (he didn’t move at all after the first time I asked him to).
I just thought it was very odd that he got so mad about my request, I thought it was simple fisherman’s etiquette to give people room to fish especially if there is plenty of other areas to fish (the whole bank is fishable at this lake). My other thought was that maybe he thought he could get away with something like that because my girlfriend and I are 22 and 20 and he was probably mid 40s. Maybe he thought we wouldn’t say anything, I’m not too sure. He also tried to play the local card but I also fish the lake all the time and have never had anything like this happen.
Posted by gimmesum_