boats bloody boats

a good article jeff.
one which hits a sore point with me too.
my experience of boat pilots is very varied. having studied for rya qualifications, you tend to find that people who studt for the qualifications have a responsible attitude to bating, but the hire for a while everyday tend to be idiots.
why is it that to drive a car you have to go through a series of tests before you are allowed behind the wheel.
to get in a boat all you have to do is walk into a hire shop and say you want to hire one.
isn't it time that there was enforcement of a mandatory instruction and test before you can go near one on any piece of water.
or is it because this would stop the tourist industry totally irresponsibly letting any idiot into one.
Fishing the thames round oxford as i do you get quite a lot of experience of the idiots. floating along beer/champagne bottle in one hand swigging away.

Hi Jeff
I remember that day well what a load of idiots they were. Must have damaged the hull and I can remember the skipper ( the man with cap on )saying 'he would not be long' to us and do you know what he was right.
We fished the Thames once on Twyfords patch. It was very foggy infact to tell how bad it was we got lost crossing a field with visibilty down to 10 yards or less. Well we were sat in the fog fishing away when we first heard 'in out, in out,in out. I could not believe it out of the fog came a viking long boat with a bunch of college boys on board.Perhaps they wanted to go to Valhalla in a hurry. How they managed not to hit the islands that are out there i don't know.Mind you they just vanished in the fog and were not seen again that day.
Jeff you would love it there because these college lads have no or little idea on how to row in a straight line and its great fun watching them sink to the bottom in 12ft of water.One moment they row past you the next moment they swim past you must be some new competition we thought.
To be fair they are some great boat lads out there that slow down and head out but not many of them.

Had an incident a couple of months back where some hooray henry's ploughed through my swim taking out both rods and cutting one of my fingers badly as I tried to gut the braid with a pair of scissors. The reason they ploughed through my swim and nearly crashed into a moored boat was.... they were throwing apples at the bullocks on the far bank.

you see with a licensing scheme these morons could have the license removed for life.
you could then enforce no hiring of boats or sale of boats to anyone not producing a valid licence, thus stopping them from getting one

I've a mixed experience - my 'local' being the middle and upper Trent. I think boat users are a bit like road users - most are good guys (and gals!), but there are some to**ers.

Great article, Jeff. That bit about the fencing that was put up by the club is unfortunate. Looking at the picture put up by the landowner makes you wonder if they had had a bad experience with injured swans, perhaps?

Much of the bank on the middle Trent is lined with heavy stones. This seemed to have done the trick (can anyone tell me when this was done?). We get the same sort of boats on this river, and although it gets busy in the summer, I don't expect that it is as bad as the Thames. Having said that, I know that up until the late eighties/early nineties there used to be barges using the river below Nottingham that used to suck the river almost dry before sending you grabbing the keepnet and scrambling up the bank. I'm sure Ron and others will know what I mean...you didn't hang around! I remember seeing the tidal Trent 'aga'. Wow! I was fishing a National at the time on a split tide. I had a fairly high bank behing me (Dunham 'dubs'), but the guy opposite had a shallow shingle bank. It must have frightened him to death because he couldn't see it until the last minute. It would definately have unsettled him...

I like the idea of a proper licence, a bit like a masters certificate for sea going vessels plying for trade. Only trouble Jason - when they want to break the rules, just like with motorists, they'll do it when no-ones around. Like the guy I cited in the story there - that was true and he must have started cracking up 18 or 20 knots.

At least, as you say, it would ensure that most others would have some basis navigational knowledge.

Now barges... boy oh boy. What a noise a barge makes when it hits a solid stone bank at 5mph. These wallies forget that boats don't have disk brakes.

And if they spill their beer - well, that's just a bonus!

Dave - sorry mate I didn't see your comment whilst I was making up mine.

Can I just jump on the swans thing. I get to find out about 90% of any injuries or damage to swans along that length and nothing to my knowledge has been reported.

I see your point, but in fact the swans are in greater danger along there from dogs let loose than anything else. I've also had to chase the cows back out of that bit and into the neighbouring field after folks had kindly left the gates open (usually the rowing trainers on their bikes).

Those trent barges were massive things, i accidentally hooked one once in the mid eighties at holm marsh,when i mis cast while trying to get the bait back in as soon as possible in a school match. it had half the line off my reel before i could get something to cut it with as i couldn't get it to break.

I think that was the same match that my friend on the next peg caught 52 bootlace eels and weighed in nothing because he was using a gudgeon mesh keepnet.

the worst thing i saw on the thames was about 3 years ago, i'd been fishing all afternoon, watching a pair of knigfishers going in to a tree across on the far bank.
when a cruiser a good 30 footer came up the river. going far too fast. the bloke at the wheel had a glass of some thing in one hand, you could hear the thump thump of some dismal music balaring out and the screaming and laughing of people obviously having a good time. i fish in a part of the river which has a canalised bit and a pass up to a dead end.
the pilot about 30 yards past the split obviously realised he had gone into the dead end so he decided to turn ploughing straight into the tree. now the screems were not laughing and he spilled his drink.
then he slammed it into reverse. narrowly missing the near bank and my rod tips.then once again into full forward soaking me as i tried to salvage my tackle.
but what really annoyed me is i didn't see the kingfishers again that year.

I recently hooked a sailing dingy that was in a sailing race, as it went over my line on a resevoir. I don't think my line had sunk fully as it went past.
Anyway, I tightened the clutch and decided to just hang on until it it snapped me. Amazingly I was playing the bloody thing for over 10 seconds and I didn't give it an inch.
I looked up and saw several puzzled faces, wondering why they weren't moving!!

I lost my feeder in the end, but lost them a place or too!!
6lb maxima is strong stuff!!