Fishing with strangers

[FishingFool]

Trust your gut...if they seem shady, let'em be...if you enjoyed the convo, had fun just making the small talk, why not...its not like its a date or anything...HAHAHAH

I remember sometime last year, I was fishing off the dock at Lake Meridian. I think at the time, it was just me and some random old russian guy there.

I was there for maybe an hr or so. Then comes this guy just looking around. Asked a few basic questions about the lake and fishing and stuff. Then he offered me a boat ride. Said it's parked right over there if I was interested in it....

(um, this line edited out for our under 18 crowd - please, keep it clean. Thank you... Mike)

I dont know, but I find that very strange. Asking random strangers if they want to go on your boat.

[swedefish4life1]

It was the Russian Mob good thing you passed!!!:colors: :dj:

Fish on some real risk takers /pace :cyclopsan and be safe:-&

[Bscman]

Random strangers you met that day? No thanks...

I have a couple lakes I frequent, and I usually run across the same few guys...When you keep seeing the same guys, and chat with them a few times a week/months, you start to figure out just what kind of person they are...then yes, I'd consider it!

[relfen]

Well, I don't know about fishing with strangers, but some of ya'll are definitely strange ;)

[tnj8222]

like said above i frequent alot of the same lakes and see the same people there alot and have went out fishing with a few of them. i have met tons of people fishing off of silver lake resorts dock and wanted me to go out fishing with them on there boat just because i know the lake pretty descent and they are new to it.

[fishnislife]

[quote="relfen"]Well, I don't know about fishing with strangers, but some of ya'll are definitely strange ]

Exactly what I was thinking.






fishnislife

[gian]

its funny this should pop up because it just happened to me last weekend. I was pulling my boat out of the lake, putting my gear away. Someone pulls up in a car and asks how the fishing was. No big deal. then he asks about the lake itself. No prob. He asks about the river down the road and some of it's tributaries. Again, all perfectly fine. He then says he is looking to buy a house in the area, and asks me for my cell phone number. Now here's where my radar went up. He's got small scabs all over his face like he was hit in the face with a branch, and during our whole conversation he wouldn't make eye contact with me. Hey some people are timid, but when I declined to give up my number he seemed more agressive. I gave him this web site adress and told him to use the resources on the site. He asked one more time. I told him I didn't feel comfortable giving out my number to a complete stranger that I had only talked to for 5 minutes. He took off.
Now I've met people on lakes and what not. And I've asked strangers some of those exact questions. But it would never dawn on me to ask someone I just met for personal information, unless they offer it to me. I've met people on this web site that I fish with, but there was dialog before we ever met face to face. Washington is fortunate that the crime levels are lower than other states, but that doesn't mean you wont run into some beat up drifter that wants to put you in his trunk. If i've been talking to someone I just met on the water, at the end of the day I usually end it with " nice talking to you, maybe I'll see you again out here" and leave it at that. Maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but all those coroner pics they show you in the POST acadamy stay with you for awhile.

[The Quadfather]

interesting stuff :batman: These days with all the ways to look up people in online people searches.. with your phone number one could probably get back to your address where you live,, and park your boat... underwear size and everything

[swedefish4life1]

My Problem was Sleeping with Strangers#-o :batman: :bom: lol

[Mike Carey]

I actually have gone fishing with a stranger years ago. I was around 30 and had just moved to the Seattle area. I was fishing the Ilwaco jetty for silvers and happened to stop by the boat ramp watching guys bring their boats in. Got into a conversation with an older guy who had done pretty good. Anyway, he invited me to join him the next day as his fishing buddy wasn't available. So I met him the next day and the fishing was kinda tough. We caught a couple as I recall. The only disapointing thing was he kept both fish because I had lost one of his flashers to a fish! So I came home empty handed, LOL. BUt hey, I still got out on the water. Just kinda weird...

[Marc Martyn]

Ya, fishing with strangers is kind of weird. A couple of years ago, I got an email from a guy that I had chatted with online for some time. He sent me an email saying that he would be in Spokane in mid March and wanted to go fishing. I replied that the lakes were still frozen over. He asked me if there was any open water and that he really wanted to go fishing. I told him that most of the lakes in the area were solid with ice except for maybe around the edges. He told me he only needed a couple of yards of open water. He was really insisting that he wanted to go fishing. This is when I got to wondering about the guy.
A day or so before he was coming to Spokane, he sends me an email saying he didn't have his boat and was wondering if I could get a boat for him. As this situation got stranger and stranger, I finally agreed that I would try to find one for him to use.
The day he arrives, he tells me he wanted me to take him out to the lake. Well, I'm thinking to myself, I've communicated with this guy online for some time, he can't be too crazed. I agreed to take him out and asked what motel he was staying in. He said he couldn't afford a motel and that he was staying with a friend in town. Brother, what have I gotten myself into? He gives me an address. It was in a nice neighborhood, so I relaxed some then. I got to the house and rang the door bell. The door opens and there stands a real big guy with a beard. "You must be Marc" he says in a big deep voice. He invites me in and calls out, "Mike, Marc's here!"
Well, after all the worrying, he and his friend he was staying with were pretty nice guys and the day of fishing went quite well. But it was strange how desperate he was in wanting to go out fishing. He did catch a couple of nice Browns so he was happy, one of which is in the following picture.

[returnofthefish]

-Mark M, Your story does sound strange. Were you afraid for your life when you were on the frozen lake with this man?

[Marc Martyn]

Well, that did cross my mind a couple of times. I did, however, make sure that he didn't have any sharp objects in his hands while I floated up next to him in my pontoon boat. Having my boat sink in 37º water would not be good!