When life hands you lemons.....

[ifightnerdz]

I wanted to talk about an experience I've had fishing about dock this spring when it was jam packed with people.

I've been fishing the walleye spawn each spring from a certain dock with great success. Inevitably when the fishing gets hot for me, people see my catches and the dock starts to get jam packed with people. It's mostly large immigrant families that will flood the spot.

This spring it happened again. When they first showed up they weren't overly talkative. Just a quick hi. They would talk to each other in their native language. As much as I wanted to just break the ice, I kept silent. In addition, the dock is literally shoulder to shoulder with their crew of people. The tension quickly turned once they see me out fishing them. They start asking questions and I start teaching them new techniques. After a few days, we finally just become friends. I learned about their family lives and associations. They taught me some words in their native language. We met each other's kids. I learned that in their native country, there are so many poor people that fishing like this is actually a way of life just to put food on the table. So many poor people that it is very common to be shoulder to shoulder on a fishing Bank. There is a process to fishing like this so you don't get tangled up in your neighbor's line. You wait 5 seconds after your neighbor's cast, staggering your lures in the water. There is the occasional tangle, but it happens far less than you would think.

The next part I want to share is a bit of perspective. When you see people all over spot you're hoping to fish I think most people are at the very least disappointed if not a bit upset. The thing is though, these are public fishing spots. The only ownership we hold on these spots is in our memories. I had real good conversations with these guys about the way they are treated and the way they also act. I asked them why they weren't very friendly when I first met them. After all by now I could tell they were a very jovial happy group of people. Really they just have so many bad interactions with people, that they are hesitant to interact in any way that could turn negative. They fully get the fact that language barriers and cultural differences often influence this. Admittedly I witnessed 3 interactions with people who came to that dock that did not go well. None were my newfound friends fault. I think there are a lot of biases towards these immigrant groups that perhaps aren't quite fair. Such as leaving garbage everywhere or being upset that your spot is taken. In reality, ALL fisherman need to do a better job of keeping our trash out of the water...this is a problem not limited to any one group of fishermen. Nobody owns a public spot. Trust me, I have to remind myself this when someone found my morel mushroom holes too!

Fishing with these guys brought so many positives. I still managed to fill my freezer with Walleye and I made some new friendships. I learned some new cooking techniques as we shared meals we are famous for. I was able to learn a little bit more about the world outside of my own and they were able to learn about the new world that they joined. I hope eventually these guys will feel comfortable enough to walk around with a smile and I hope the rest of us can learn to take disappointment and turn it into a positive.

Thanks for reading!

[kodacachers]

Nice post! Thank you!

[hewesfisher]

Well written and I couldn't agree more! No one has a "spot" anywhere unless they actually own the property and we've all met those who think they own public property. If someone is fishing a spot I'd like to, I simply move on, as I have many "spots".