At the beach Sunday with two families on each side of us - each maybe 30 yards away. Two trucks drive up and park between my truck and one of the families.

Six men proceed to get out and set up to fish. A couple men hammer in PVC and set their rods in the pipe, while a few more go about 30 yards into the surf and start casting.

One of the sets of parents to my left called their kids out of the water, while the other dad went to confront the fishermen.

I'm not big into getting in the water, but I wouldn't have felt safe, thinking I might get hooked.

After being confronted, the guys took their PVC set-up down and the six of them spread out and took up probably 50 yards or more of the coastline and nobody else went into the water from either family.

Is it a free-for-all or is somebody doing the wrong thing? Is it "I was here first" and you should move on to another spot?

Pot licking

Walk out with a knife and any time you come into contact with a fishing line cut it. Play stupid saying you thought it was a loos line in the surf that was hung up you were trying to clear.

With as much line as i've seen out for surf fishing seems kind of close quarters to me. The neighborly and adult thing to do would have been for those guys that rolled up to talk and see if they were going to be in the way or cause a problem. Maybe they could have come to an equitable solution and made friends along the way.

Common courtesy says they were outa line, but whatcha gonna do? Lifeguards might come to your rescue, if they were around, but otherwise, sounds like you got victimized by some rude rowdies.

One more questions I have:

Over the last 5 years I've seen more and more of the PVC set-up happening all day. Used to it was just in the mornings.

Typically, how far out into the water does the line go out? If it's hundreds of yards then no biggie, nobody is going to get hooked, right?

They were probably shark fishing and thought the kids chumming the water would help.

If you get hooked, you should be able to win a lawsuit. But they're most likely uncollectable, so you will just be out thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and nothing will happen to them. Being a **** is usually rewarded by our legal system.

It's a free for all but one would expect common courtesy. Some folks don't have manners.

There are a holes in all areas of life. Sucks when you bump into one. Hope it didn't completely ruin the day for yall.

Normally where it falls it falls. So if they wade into waterthrow a 50 yard cast, walk back to shore, that would be the distance.

Getting poked with the hook if playing would be a very low probability. Probably more of a chance to get stung by jellyfish.

thanks

They were rookies.

FunkyKO said:

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It's a free for all but one would expect common courtesy. Some folks don't have manners.

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This.

Same type of people that leave trash on the beach or dump couches and refrigerators at the ends of dead end roads, etc.

Best thing you can do is go have a polite conversation with them, sometimes folks just don't have the light bulb come on when it should. Sometimes they don't care at all and are just aholes. But if you don't talk with them, nothing will ever change.

FunkyKO said:

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They were rookies.

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I've seen those at gun shows and other trade shows but have never seen one in person. What i have seen is guys with drones they attach their line/bait to. Fly it out a couple hundred yards and trigger the mechanism to drop the bait. Pretty cool and I'm sure is done at the ire of the creators of these goofy cannons.

Sucks you had to deal with that. Those dudes were definitely out of line.

I enjoy wading the surf myself. And I've posted up with the PVC rigs. We used to have a TexAgs OB Bull Red Round-up in the fall near High Island where a bunch of guys would post up with the big rigs and target bull reds off the beach. We'd have a big campfire, BBQ, and camp out on the beach while we'd all hang out. However, we always leave room for folks to drive around us easily and we wouldn't have anybody else posted up nearby.

It always blows my mind when I see people trying to fish off a crowded beach.

They were lazy aholes that didn't bother to search for a more open section of beach.

Humans are drawn to closer proximity with other humans. They will have an impulse to get close to your grouping even with a huge bit of open beach, because they have an innate curiosity why you have chosen that part of the beach. It might have some positive quality they can exploit. This is instinctive, not cognitive.

A good fisherman and someone who is not a self absorbed ahole will override that impulse and find an area to set up beach rods away from swimmers.

Besides, that method of fishing is virtually useless from About 8am to near dusk. They'll get little whiting, croakers, and hard heads, and maybe a dink trout.

They need to be out working something up off the bottom with a casting rod or kayaking baits out a couple hundred yards into shark and bull red range.

These days unless you go to the beach on Wednesdays at 0600 the likelihood of even finding a spot to squeeze in to try to fish is damn near impossible. You have to be 10 mi down PINs (exaggerated of course, but not really lol). From port A to Fish pass 2 weekends ago were only tiny gaps to squeeze into and there were lines out about every 100yds or so. The weekend before it was like that from whitecap beach at least 3-4mi down before we turned around. The beaches are non-stop packed, more so than I fee they've been in the last 30yrs I've been going. So you'll prob almost always have someone fishing around you.

I'm old school. That is a dick move. Unwritten beach rules are first there, first choice. I would have gone to talk with them nicely to make sure they understood where I was coming from. If they push back, I would have to assess again, but calmly discussing the situation should educate even the dumbest of honks. Some people weren't raised properly.

I'm gonna guess they are locals to the area, and by that virtue, the beach truly belongs to them. In their POV, you are basically trespassing.

We were on Whitecap beach over the 4th and I was surprised at how many people were trying to fish when there were honestly no gaps to park a golf cart. We had people try to set up directly in front of us on the beach who acted surprised when we asked them not to do so. Common sense and etiquette and decency are gone.

Fish at dawn, night, or dusk when the fish actually bite.

Also, drive down the beach a ways and the crowds thin out.

javajaws said:

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They were probably shark fishing and thought the kids chumming the water would help.

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Kidding aside, this is why I don't like swimming/wading near surf fishing. I'm not so much worried about their hooks as I am the bitey creatures chasing the bait fish being reeled in, esp in low-vis water.

MousepadMarauder said:

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We were on Whitecap beach over the 4th and I was surprised at how many people were trying to fish when there were honestly no gaps to park a golf cart. We had people try to set up directly in front of us on the beach who acted surprised when we asked them not to do so. Common sense and etiquette and decency are gone.

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It absolutely astounds me that when we spend a week on the beach over in Florida off 30A the number of people trying to fish the surf when it's ******** to elbow. I'd generally give kids a pass but for the fact that their parent should tell them that when there's 500 people in a 100 yard stretch of water at 2 in the afternoon it's not a good idea to try and fish and your odds are virtually zero.

Similarly, like almost everybody we'll rent a pontoon boat for a day and let the kids try to hunt up hermit crabs in the bay on the back side of Okaloosa Island/Eglin Beach Park where there's 50 other pontoons and with kids doing the same thing and there's guaranteed to be some slappy with a 5000 sized spinning rod fishing 30 feet from everybody's kids.

I get that not everybody has the opportunity to fish that often and not everybody knows what they're doing but, like you said, common sense in these situations would go a long way. But it's completely nonexistent.

"Humans are drawn to closer proximity to other humans."

I guess outside of family and friends I'm unsocial. I like to get as far away from crowds as possible. If I can get where I can't see another person, all the better. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

aggiedent said:

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"Humans are drawn to closer proximity to other humans."

I guess outside of family and friends I'm unsocial. I like to get as far away from crowds as possible. If I can get where I can't see another person, all the better. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

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Big Bend Ranch State Park
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Devil's River

These are few of my favorite things

aggiedent said:

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"Humans are drawn to closer proximity to other humans."

I guess outside of family and friends I'm unsocial. I like to get as far away from crowds as possible. If I can get where I can't see another person, all the better. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

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Do you know how to craft a viable fish trap? How long can you stay away from family and friends? Do you have a pierced nose and kind of portly?

If so, we want to watch you on TV.

Had the opposite happen to me many years ago in Gulf Shores. Had been fishing the surf with my family for several hours. The beach began to fill with more humans, but most observed that we had been there for quite a while.

A family showed up right next to us and the man, as instructed by the woman, came over and requested that we cease fishing as it was not safe for his kids.

I politely declined. They eventually scooted on down and all was well.

My thought on the matter is: public land is "first come, first served".

Feeding one's family is always more important than rich people recreating on the beach not having a care in the world.

Yes. There is a bro etiquette. I have pretty much ALWAYS approached this in the exact same manner as I would when selecting a urinal in the men's room.

As stated, this method works best when you are early or the only one on the beach in which case you can quite literally go anywhere you want. If you aren't first, and there is a dude fishing at one end of the beach, you carry your a$$ down to the OTHER end of the beach and set up camp, then the next dude would select the spot between both, and so on. Much like the men's room, once all acceptable spots are taken, you don't just wedge yourself in between two dude and take a pi$$... You wait or go somewhere else.

It's not rocket science. The problem is that no one has any respect for others.