I was anchored in 4.5 feet of water about twenty-five to thirty feet from the bank.

A guy thought he would run full throttle through the fishing grounds. Then to my amazement he passed between my boat and the shore. Not only waked me pretty good, but he spooled my reel and relieved me of my lure. I motored over to him and expressed my anger at him and told him that he was going too fast and too close to an anchored vessel. He didn't seem to agree. I have always thought that when aproaching a boat that is anchored with people fishing that you throttle down to about 5 mph. Whats the rule? Is there one?
Not only did this piss me off, it ruined my day of fishing. No line no fishing.

Where did it happen?

Area 13 Rocky Bay.

Marine waters! get numbers and report it to the Coast Guard. I had an incident near Ketchikan about 12 years ago where a local was upset that I was fishing the same area he was, he purposely waked me and knocked 1 of my clients (an older gentleman) down, we reported it and the CG did investigate (took statements from me and clients) not sure what the outcome was but I do know they had a talk with the guy.

If it's the salt then he should have stayed away from your boat. If he had to be close than at least he should have slowed down a little. Not 5 mph though, no reason to do that in the salt. Maybe in the river.

I wish I had taken his numbers.

For the record there was about three hundred yards of water on the other side of my boat.

He just wanted to impress people or somthing.

Capt. Dan,

Unfortunately there are some inconsiderate people in all walks of life.

We had some jerk run between us and the bank at full speed on the Shohomish two years ago.

Of course the river was only about a hundred yards wide and we were about 20 feet off the bank, so this maybe he thought there was not enough clearance on the open water side.

We got waked and the pinks went off the bite for several minutes.

I don't know what you can do legally about this kind of dangerous and inconsiderate boat driving.

You might contact the Coast Guard and inquire about this kind of conduct, since it is in their jurisdiction?

Hopefully all your line is tightly wound around his prop shaft and will cause him great inconveniece.

Have a better fishing day.

the unspoken rule is comon sense. wich some people severely lack. it does not matter weather sled or drift boat. i have owned them both and it happens all the time on all the rivers and sound. just a lot of stupid people!!

The past rule is within 50ft of any vessile that is at rest the no wake law can be enfoeced either by the costies or the county. this applied in the past but with the fast growing number of people that just don't give a SSSSSt. I have not sean it enforced even with law enforcement watching.

I have come to learn that common sense isn't so common

This is why I no longer fish in the general vicinity of Shilshole. Too many yahoos.

On a related note, I once was following a barge up the Duwamish. The barge and tug were going slow and were around the bend in the channel but before the West Seattle bridge. The Siox Arrow (the Immigration and Naturalization Service) which docks at Harbor Island was in the channel proper. I was at the turn point in the channel pacing the speed of the barge. The INS thought I was just taking my sweet time and didn’t see the barge so they decide to get annoyed at me and gun their engines and charge full speed around the corner, creating a huge wake. Needless to say once he gets close he realizes why I’m going so slow and then has to stall just like myself. Of course I then am dealing with this massive wake that is tossing me about and was created by none other than our local law enforcement. Moral of the story: yahoo’s are not confined to just private operators... (in defense of the INS it was likely just some young teenage recruit driving the boat, but still...)

this is where the theory of natural selection comes into effect. stupid people do stupid things and their gene pool is dead. i have no idea why they do these things. the MWR run by NAS whidbey rents out boats to sailors who run full speed (30-40mph) and pass within a few feet or closer to each other dead on. i they colided i didn't see anything.