Page 7 - Palm City Spotlight - March '20

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Palm City Spotlight, Page 7

Treasure Coast Outdoors

Water Use Conflicts Could Be the “Sandpile” and “Bull the gill net controversy. Before gill nets were outlawed,

Avoided With Common Sense Shark Reef.” This results the fishery was severely impacted by the commercial use
in a high number of people
of gill nets. Years later there are still a lot of bad feelings
And A Little Decency fishing, or spearfishing, in on both sides.
a concentrated area. I’m fortunate enough to know several commercial
By Jim Weix For the most part, anglers. Since they make a living catching fish, they are
It is depressing when I hear stories like the recent one everyone tries to get along better at it than many recreational anglers. So, instead of
about the boat full of anglers that were anchored over a and deal with the situation. cursing them, I ask them for advice. My success rate has
small piece of structure and fishing for cobia. They had Last week, while cobia increased by following their advice.
been fishing for about an hour, when a boatload of divers fishing at the Sandpile, Unlike the intentionally rude behavior of the divers
pulled up next to them, grabbed their spear guns, and my anchor got stuck on that pulled up to the boat of anglers, most water conflicts
jumped into the water. When the anglers complained, something when I tried to are the result of operator error or crowded conditions.
the divers taunted them about what great spearing they pull it up. A diver saw my Most of these things can be dealt with in a mature matter.
would have by diving in the angler’s chum line. situation, asked if he could help, then dove down and A tangled line can be untangled. There is no need for a
Water conflicts are nothing new, but cobia fishing freed my anchor. He even hand delivered it to me. shouting match.
seems to bring out the worst in people. That is because There is also the common conflict between recreational So how do we deal with situations like the divers? My
the cobia like to congregate over such spots as and commercial anglers. This is probably the aftermath of first thought would be to drop a few weighted quarter
stick firecrackers into the water. Although the underwater
concussion might fix their personality defects, it would
also land me in jail, so toss that tempting idea.
The unfortunate fact is that there isn’t really a legal
way to fix people that are intentionally rude. There have
always been these types of people.
As for the cobia fishing, I’ve chosen to avoid these
situations by fishing lesser known structure. Thanks to
the advice of a commercial fisherman, I downloaded and
printed a copy of the numerous reefs in Martin County.
This way I can find uncrowded spots. Another plus is that
the cobia at these spots haven’t watched three dozen baits
pass by them in the last hour, so they are more likely to
hit your bait. Go to https://www.martin.fl.us/resources/
martin-county-reefs-coordinates-list-pdf.
Editor’s note: Jim Weix is an avid hunter, angler,
conservationist, as well as an outdoor writer. Jim is
included in the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s Hall of
Fame for his work in helping restore thousands of acres
of wetlands. Jim is a Broker Associate with The Keyes
Company. He can be reached at (772) 341-2941 or by
email: jimweix@jimweix.com.

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