Dear Aunt Crabbe: I just left the lake after fishing in a Saturday tournament. It seems to me that many boat drivers and anglers are competing for Jerk (mahalo🙏) of the Year. What happened to civility? Signed, Just Wondering
Dear Just Wondering: Welcome to the 21st Century. Suck it up, Buttercup. Just focus on not becoming one of them. And try fishing with Midweek Bass Anglers of AZ, Arizona’s Premier Bass Club (so they say). Regardless of which club is best, Wednesdays on the water are so much better than weekends and holidays. There’s less time to watch disasters and heated arguments at the ramp, but you can’t have everything. Sincerely, Aunt Crabbe
A Dose of Reality
Team Tournaments require civility. In shared-boat fishing, cooperation between Teammates is essential to having fun and success. A day shared with a Teammate who is ego-centric, selfish or uncooperative is painfully long. So is sharing water with boaters who cause problems.
We’ve all experienced bad boaters and boat-sharing problems on the water. But have you ever been guilty? Have you ever back-seated a co-angler? Zipped a 1-oz jig right past your boater’s head? Combed your boater’s hair or treble-hooked their ear with a crankbait? Poached someone’s water? Blown through a No Wake Zone? Blocked access to a cove? Come in so hot that your wake threw someone out of a boat, or a kayak? Fished Off Limits? Cut in ahead of a boat that is fishing a bank? Cut across a shore angler’s line? Drilled a boat in a slip with a bad cast? There are many ways to be The Problem on the water, and far too many boaters and anglers demonstrate them!
Simply put, problem boaters and anglers make on-the-water experiences much less enjoyable, and sometimes downright unsafe. Nobody needs that, so let’s not be guilty. Always practice good boating and fishing etiquette. Be a good role model for other anglers and boaters, even if you think nobody is watching. These days, somebody is always watching.
Midweek’s expectations for Boater Etiquette and Co-Angler Etiquette (click those links, please!) are reasoned and reasonable. Frankly, the same approaches should be used every time we fish or boat, not just when we are in an MWBA tournament. Fish on!
