You're at your bass tournament. Somebody is sitting right on your spot, I mean exactly on the only spot you have any confidence in. What do you do? This question plagues us all at one time or another. You have to decide to leave and go "potluck" to catch some fish or push your way through the other anglers and try to get them to move.
I know this has happened to all of you. What did you do? This moral dilemma happens in every tournament. There are lots of ways to approach this problem. With all things being equal, the rule of thumb is to treat the people in the other boat how you want to be treated. Don't get mad at them if you're not the first one there. What makes the situation such a touchy one is that every person is different and has different values. The real problem, of course, that makes most people the maddest during tournaments is if the other people are catching fish after fish on "their hole." Most people can't help themselves and keep getting closer and closer.
Several options are at your disposal if you're there first and the one doing good. My personal choice is what I call the shot across the bow or warning shot. I'll pick up my Carolina rig with at least a 1-ounce weight and throw it at the other boat when I think they have reached the boundary that I have in my mind. I would never hit the other boat, but I have crossed their lines. Only on two occasions has this ever "not" stopped the other boat from encroaching on my spot. This is when you'll be able to say something to them. But yelling or cursing will only make the situation worse. Always use a calm, clear voice, and be polite.
In a team tournament on Lake Granbury a few years ago, this situation happened to me. We were fishing a ditch next to a bulkhead wall. The fishing was tough, but my partner Mike Odem and I were catching keeper after keeper. The lake was falling, and every fish on the large flat was moving to the ditch. A local bass club team watched us catch over 20 keepers. They had been fishing near the boat docks and kept getting closer and closer. I threw my Carolina rig to the corner of the last dock. They would have to run over my line to get to our spot, so after 30 minutes, they left. They came back from time to time to see if we were still there, and of course, we were. Finally, after about four hours, they started fishing toward us. We were still catching fish. It was a true tournament angler's dream. The falling water had seemed to turn every bass off except the school in our ditch. I never said anything to them, but I finally had to throw within inches of the front of their boat to get them to turn around. They did, but only after the angler in the back of the boat told the one running the trolling motor not to get in our way.
Every angler's definition of courtesy is different. I make an extra effort to show every angler, tournament fisherman or not, as much courtesy as possible. Sometimes that's not good enough for some people. This past January, I was fishing for an individual tournament on lake Palestine. The weather was cold and foggy at take-off. I fished out of an aluminum bass boat because I was fishing the shallow, upper reaches. When I reached my fishing area at the mouth of the pocket, there was a local fisherman about 20 yards from the cut I had to go through. I put my motor, which has a 60 hp Mercury, as slow as possible and made a broad curve around him to reach my spot finally. He had three floats out, so I knew he wasn't in the tournament. Later in the day, he trolled up to me and asked if I was in a tournament. I told him I was and had three keepers on a very tough day. He said it must be my first one because he had never seen anybody as rude as me to him that morning. After I idled by him that morning, he said, I had spooked all the fish. He said tournaments had a rule that you couldn't fish within 50 feet of another boat. I could have told him that I didn't start fishing until I was at least 50 yards away, not 50 feet and that there was room for at least ten boats to fish. What happened was that the sun made its appearance over the horizon when I went by him. That is probably why his fish had quit biting.
I told him I sincerely apologized if I had offended him. It just so happened that when this conversation took place, I was parked at the mouth of the bay, and I told him to go on by me if he wanted to. This got me wondering if I had been rude or not. I didn't think so, but everyone's definition is different.
Sportsmanship in every tournament is a rule. The purses keep getting bigger, and lakes seem to have more boats. If everyone will just put themselves in the shoes of those in the other boat and treat each other with the golden rule and just plain common sense, it'll all work out.
