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Lowholed on the Sky today!

1K views 5 replies 6 participants last post by  headstrong1 
#1 ·
Who Woulda Thunk?

This morning, I hoofed it into a good loking tailout on the Sky that I had been eyeballing for quite awhile. When I emerged from the woods I saw a couple driftboats had just moved into the pool, so I walked upstream and began working my way down behind them. While I was fishing another four boats came down. They all passed through with a friendly nod and fished the far side on their way out of the pool.

Just as I got into my "honey" water, a white, red and black Clackacraft with three flyfishers came through. I held back my cast as they came by me and we joked about not being at Meydenbauer. Next thing, they pulled off just below me, dropped anchor and got out. They had something to drink and lit cigarettes while they stood around holding their flyrods. Next thing, two of them walked about 15 feet below the boat, waded out and began casting. I continued to cast, but in 10 steps, I was at the boat and couldn't go down any further without seriously impeding my d-loop. I reeled up and walked over to the one fellow in the boat and told him I didn't think that what they did was very nice. I said that six boats came through before them and they all gave me room to fish and that I never expected my fellow flyfishers to lowhole me like they did. He was apologetic and told me he thought they were well below me.

Guys, if you are a lurker and read this, I'm not expecting you to acknowledge yourselves or write an apology. You know what you did wasn't nice. There's a lot of water on both sides of the river that you can fish that we wading flyfishers can't get to. Maybe next time you'll consider that.

This is all I am going to say on this matter.

Leland.
 
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#3 ·
Leland,

The guys who you talked to were actually my friends running my Clack and they told me about the experience when they returned the boat. They were sorry for the entire ordeal and I think lesson's have been learned. I saw your post and immediatly called my friends. They are all good guys and I know this won't happen again.

Please don't throw egg's or rocks at my boat if you see it floating down the river tomorrow (which will be when I am in the boat).

Take care Leland and tight lines,

Mike:thumb
 
#4 ·
Ahh, I can relate!! I finally have my solution for the madness on the sky! anybody else see the crowds this weekend?? wow, sunday was a freakin zoo!! With 7 days left this season I got 3 nice runs all to myself on the upper sky. It takes 3 hours for the first boats from high bridge to get to my spot. private property is a beautiful thing.... YT:smokin
 
#5 ·
New River Mike

Not relating this to Leland's situation, which seems to have been recognized as wrongful by the participants, I think your suggestion does have some merit.

One of my co-workers back in Virginia had a placard on his office wall stating:

"Stupid is Forever, Ignorance can be Fixed."

Speaking as a relative newcomer to flyfishing and one who generally gravitates to uncrowded waters, I haven't had many experiences with crowding. On those few occasions when I have (the Skokomish last fall, as an example) the large majority of the crowd interacted very courteously, as there seemed to be a sense of understanding about how to work together. I do suspect that one of the keys was that there were significant numbers of chum salmon in the river, and so all who fished had a high liklihood of catching fish. Even at that we were low-holed once that day by three guys who fished for an hour and then left.

I'm guessing that when the liklihood of "catching success" goes down, as it does with winter steelheading, there's a greater possibility of discourtesy. In simpler terms, the tougher the competition, the more focused the competitors become.

I think it's great that when mistakes occur, it's possible for learning to take place. It helps when everyone comes into the game with some understanding of common courtesy. Unfortunately, our popular culture encourages confrontation over accomodation, and sometimes that spills over into this kind of thing.

I think posting some basic rules of good fishing sportsmanship at selected sites would only help. I think something could be printed in the State rules and even imprinted on the licenses. Lots of folks - newcomers especially, would probably learn a lot - maybe things they'd have never thought about.

The toughest challenge will be the testoserone-juiced cowboys who see fishing as one more place where "survival of the fittest" is the only rule that counts. Not only will they likely not read the rules, they won't even see that those rules apply to them.

Individually, the best we can do is to practice courtesy ourselves, ask when we're not sure, and dial down the competitive fires just a little...

Share the water, share the experience.

My two coins worth...

:professor

By the way, something like this - a campaign to raise the level of sportsmanship on state waters - might be an excellent public relations project for sportfishing and flyfishing clubs, formal and otherwise.
 
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