Originally Posted by
slimshady
For starters, I am not siding with the OP, nor do I agree with the "I don't care what the rules are" attitude. I tend to fish areas without tons of traffic so it usually doesn't matter so much. However, I do have a question for those who have more experience dealing with this. I only troll down-wind with my electric motor. Going across the waves or into them is usually not a viable option. I am basically drifting, but using the electric to assist the drift. Hypothetically, if I am trolling down-wind, with 2 other boats doing the same to my left, and a big charter boat comes trolling along from our starboard side, going perpendicular to the wind under engine power, all 3 of us are required to give way to the guy going against the grain under power? That doesn't seem right to me. Now I am not going to troll over him or get in a fight over it, I would probably pull in my lines and go somewhere else. However, it seems to me that guys who are "trolling" down-wind under electric power only, should be classified in a similar way to those who are purely drifting. In other words, pleasure boats should give way to fisherman under engine power; who should give way to those under electric power only; who should give way to drifters; who should give way to boats that are anchored. That seems like the logical heirarchy to me. The rules may not agree, but maybe the rules need to be modified to the reality of today's situation. When they were created, the category that I would fall into didn't exist. Just my opinion.