Where I fish there are gill nets everywhere.  I loose many lures to the nets and can get very frustrated.  I try and tell myself they are simply trying working very hard to make a living, but some times I think they are in bed with the Bait Monkey.

    Last week I caught a big Tilapia and saw a commercial panga near by, so I peddled over and gave him the fish.  The next cay I got my line, and rudder tangled in a net and had to cut some of it to get free.  Later that day I saw a commercial fisherman come paddling toward me.  I was sure he was going to yell at me for cutting his net.  He pulled along side and gave me a huge watermelon. It was the same guy that I gave the tilapia to.  When my wife asked what I caught, I told here 12 bass and a watermelon.

    Yesterday another commercial fisherman waved at me like he had something to show me.  I peddled over, and he held up an 8 pound bass he had just caught in his net.  The bass had a spinnerbait of mine in it's mouth and he wanted to give me the lure. Of course, it was my favorite spinnerbait, the bass had wrapped me around a tree the day before.  It was odd how much the bass shrank while in the gill net.  Must have lost at least 5 pounds.

    Kind acts like these remind me all we all want to do is catch some fish.

That is a neat story.

   1) What goes around, comes around. Some people are too impatient to recognize that.

   2) Kindness opens far more doors than keys do.

  

  jj

No commercial harvesting refresh water game fish in California. Salt water has a few restricted areas, otherwise it’s a commercial fishery. Long liners, drift nets, purse seiners, gill nets etc. always kept a good distance from any charter/cattle boats.

We were in a big tuna bite years ago when a Portuguese  mother ship wrapped the school and our boat with a giant net , sent a helicopter over and instructed to follow a pilot boat out of the their net. 

We do have professional bass fishing guides on nearly every lake fishing everyday. Like everyone else there are good guides and e few jerks, avoid them as much as possible.

Good stories are far and few between with commercial fisherman.

Tom

3 hours ago, WRB said:

 

Good stories are far and few between with commercial fisherman.

 

You’re being too nice. 

Commercial fishing is only allowed on chickamauga and nickajack in my immediate area. Isn’t that ironic, only allowed on the most famous bass fishery 

In a perfect world, there would be no recreational fishermen to impede the working man...

 

13 hours ago, BassWhole! said:

In a perfect world, there would be no recreational fishermen to impede the working man...