Morning Sentinel
Poor etiquette can douse the fishing
By TRAVIS BARRETT Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 04/09/2008

Golf's got an etiquette all its own, those unwritten rules golfers adhere to. Fishing should have it's own etiquette, too.

I mean, sometimes you just can't tell if anglers are sharing or out-and-out bragging. Know what I'm saying?

To wit: While fishing at the dam that separates Messalonskee Lake from Messalonskee Stream on Monday, I was approached by two fishermen, each fishing independently of the other. Each wanted to swap info, tell some fishing stories, do the things that we have plenty of time to do at this time of year.

Hey, we're all waiting patiently for ice-out and water temps to soar, and there's plenty of time for idle chit-chat. Compound that with the fact that we're also forced to work the same shorelines until we can plop boats and canoes into the water, and there's that added camaraderie -- the 'hey, we're all in this together until it gets to be serious-time' thing.

Generally, it comes down to two questions:

n "Any luck?"

n "How long you been here?"

Answering the opening line of questioning is easy, if not routine. It's a quick "nope, not yet" and "just a few minutes."

But, boy oh boy, if you're not trained, the conversation can quickly turn.

In the first case on Monday, there was nothing unusual at all. It was a case of a middle-aged man pulling up in a truck. He wondered if we were having any luck, where we'd been fishing over the last week, if we knew of anyplace where people were catching fish.

He talked about the long winter, the cold water, the ice still covering most of the lake.

Like my small son and I, he was just happy to be out and about in the warm spring sun.

Then he smiled an easy smile, nodded and drove off.

Piece of cake.

Half an hour later, and it was a decidedly different conversation with the second fisherman -- one with a tone that left me scratching my head. After telling him we'd been there for 45 minutes or so with no luck to speak of, his line of questioning turned aggressive. I felt like I was on an episode of "Law & Order," sitting on the witness stand, dancing around one barbed question after another.

"No strikes?"

I told him there'd been not so much as a sniff. Then he kind of got, well, indignant.

"What are you using?" he asked, more of a charge of incompetence on my part than a question.

I think he just wanted to be able to offer that condescending look of "I know more than you." How do I know this? Because of the follow-up.

"I caught a 22-inch rainbow yesterday," he offered, with nothing else. I could see he was waiting for me to, pardon the pun, take the bait.

He waited a few seconds, maybe 10, and took a quick puff of his cigarette.

"Not here, you know."

I just nodded, and he puffed again.

He then went into a long litany of where he'd been fishing, how many fish he'd caught and how long they all were. To hear him tell it, he'd filled an entire wall with trophy-sized mounts -- all from the last six days!

He caught a brown out of China Lake. "You know that's open, right?"

He caught splake by the bucketful near Bingham. "They're all, like, 15-24 inches up there."

And then there was the rainbow.

"Oh, they're biting all right. You just got to know where to go."

That kind of left me wondering. If he knew where to go -- and I obviously did not -- then why was he stopping here, where there were "no fish," to ask me how I was doing.

Hey, I'm all for conversation, and truth be told, I've got no problem sharing secrets. In fact, it kind of goes with the territory when you're an outdoors writer. But there ought to be more of an etiquette to this game.

Like golf.

Know what I'm saying?

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com

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