Etiquette

The other day, I was fishing and some guy had walked down half the river (in the wrong direction) looking for fish. My first thought was what an ass, must have walked on several dozen Brook trout and didn't see one. I  asked him " was that your car up river?" The answer was yes, and I told him that he walked through all the holding water and thanked him for wasting my time!

So what is the etiquette on any river? I'm not sure, nor do I think I should be the monitor of behavior! What I do think is this: give someone fishing a wide berth, limit your time on a certain spot to 1/2 to 1 hour, walk and fish up stream, try not walking through the holes and even if your practicing catch and release stop fishing when you would have reached your limit if you were keeping fish. I have a personal limit of 5 fish caught and released in any particular spot. If your not catching fish after an hour I got news for you its just not your day. Pack it and give it a go somewhere else or another time.

Spend sometime exploring a stream, fish are everywhere if you know how to look. Some factors to consider when out: water and air temperature, amount of sunlight hitting the water, lack of insects, rain, wind and how many other fisherman may have hit that favorite pool before you.

So that day last week when someone spent three hours in my favorite spot and another guy turned off all the waters above that off turned out pretty good.  Caught a dozen fish in three different spots. All after others fished the death out of them with no luck. Am I a better fisherman, NO! Just a more patient one. Not ten minutes after that guy spent three hours I caught my first brown of the season and I nice rainbow! Oh and the best part, I did spend just one hour there and stopped when the fish stopped. Time to go home and give it another go another time!