yesterday i was fishing the klamath river in my jetboat with one friend, for early fall run kings. the river is extremely low and warm for this time of the year. a friend told me about a location the fish were holding due to the colder water from a small creek. we arrived at the location and saw a couple boats up river, but none in the run we wanted. we made at least 10-20 drifts and either hooked up or got bit. the fish were in a small shallow channel and if you stayed off of them they continued to bite. well as usual someone sees you getting into fish they come a running. three boats saw us and began to fish. now i dont care about the other boats, but it was their boating and fishing displays that got me. they all motored right over the the fish with their main engines, and yelled and banged stuff around. it took about 5 minutes and the fish shut down. i tried to explain to guy in a brand new boat with a sportjet, that if he stayed off the fish, we could all continue to hook up. he looked at me with a look of "dont tell me how to fish". this seems to be the response from most of the new generation X type boaters. it seems that this is the way we are all headed. i have fished for over 20 years and feel i know what i am talking about when i try to talk to these guys. there are more and more new boaters every year and the same amount of river. i guess what i am getting at is have you guys found a way to get these guys to listen so we can all get into fish. i am a calm easy going guy, that approach does not seem to work. yelling and screaming usually ends up with sometype of violent response.
they all eventually left and we left the run alone for about an hour and guess what, the fish started biting agian, who would of thunk it.

Terror:

Most of us who boat, whether sled or driftboat, have had that unpleasant experience and rest assured, yours isn't the first nor will it be the last.

I suppose I am like like you in my personality and, as you know, how we come across to the offenders can produce a whole variety of outcomes. When confronting defensive boaters like you describe, I have had the best results being firm, blunt, but polite. The message sent is "I mean business too, and if you will fish it correctly like us you're welcome to join us with no hard feelings".

This has generally given me favorable results but there are those who just don't get it. In those cases, I usually move on because:

1) I don't want to go to jail for murder.

2) There is no sense in staying as the
knuckle heads turned off the bite anyway.

Good luck in a difficult situation!