Fishermans

So off i went to the local harbour for a few hours flounder fishing, a first for me in Sweden as a friend recommended it for a regular bit of rod bending action. However he did not warn me that, the harbour was the home to the biggest idiots that i have ever had the pleasure to meet, and they all have boats!!

Well there i was quiver tipping with light tackle, in the pouring rain, whilst patting myself on the back for packing my umbrella. When round the corner came, a member of the Donald Campbell fan club.

I thought that he would give me a wide berth as he could blatantly see i was fishing, you know, as you would expect in Britain.
After asking myself several times " is he going to go round me"? i realized that he was not going to and was heading right for me about 4 meters from where i was fishing. As soon as i realized that the the guy was without a doubt going to go right over my lines (i had 2 rods out) i jumped to my feet and started to reel the first rod in.

The boat was getting closer and i was asking myself "has this guy seen me, or what"?!. I thought that my fluorescent orange day glow suit would have attracted his attention, and frantically reeling a rod in would have indicated to him that perhaps i was fishing.

This is where you would expect him to slow down, because he has only just seen you and slows down to give you a chance to get your tackle in.

Ha ha ha That's what i thought aswell, what unexpectedly happened was that, he had seen me as he was looking at me, winding in like a man possessed, and did he slow down?? not even an attempt!!! Not believing my eyes, i watched this crazy nutter, drive right over my lines, when it actually registered in my head that, this guy had just actually done this, i dipped both rods, tip first towards the bottom, in a last attempt to save my line and rigs intact.

But the few seconds standing with my gob wide open in disbelief, prevented me from getting the lines down deep enough.
Hoping that the boat would pass over without catching the lines was short lived. Round bent both tips towards the boat and off screamed both reels. I clung to both rods as the guy in the boat was looking at me.

Surely he will stop now he can see he's got both my lines and maybe apologize for being so stupid, NOPE not even a flinch!!

So it was one hand on each spool, and wait for the "crack & twang" before he buggers off with all my reel line. TWANG!!! now i could sit down and try and convince myself that what had just happened, did actually happen and it was definitely a man driving the boat and not some blind creature that was born stupid and cant drive boats on his way back home to Stupidville. That couldn't resist one last act of stupidity before dinner!

Nope, it was to my disbelief, a MAN, and it seemed from where i was standing that he was fully aware of what he was doing and that he intentionally wanted to catch my lines. Why? i'll never know! Maybe he didn't like my suit or maybe it was the fact that he was in a boat and i wasn't. This seriously reducing the chances of him getting a size 10 boot stuck in his mouth and whacked around with bank sticks!!

So i rigged both rods back up while trying to think of all the rude & offensive things that i should have called him, but didn't.

Not long after this i caught my first Swedish flounder. This made me feel better, as a blank would have just been great. I returned the fish alive after a quick photo and giggled to myself as i asked the flounder if "it was him that was driving that boat" (mmmm yes, well).

Time for a celebratory cup of coffee and a cigarette.................. NO! a chance ! A sneaky bloke with a very quiet outboard motor came round the corner out of nowhere and "de ja vous" came with him.

No he's not.... is he? no?, he's gonna give me a wide berth i thought.... not on your nelly mate. This guy is going to do the same thing as the first idiot. A change of tactics came to me, as i wouldn't get caught out this time by leaving it to late and waiting for him to slow down, as one would normally be expect.

So up jumped the guy in the big orange suit (me), waving his arms at the guy in the boat and trying to reel in at the same time.

I then thought, he's not going to stop either, so i shouted in Swedish for him to wait a little whilst pulling my lines out in the water. He must have been deaf & blind, as slowing down was not on his list of things to do.
After shouting numerous times i was certain that he was not going to stop. I started the tip dipping exercise as my last hope, but this time i was able to shout quite a few insulting & offensive obscenities in English as one would do, with a bit of Swedish thrown in just in case he never got the message.

BEND, SCREAM, GRAB, TWANG... 2 more leads down the toilet and my line 20 meters shorter.

Annoyed would be a word i would choose without swearing and thinking that there are 2 idiots in boats on the loose. I was getting the "they did it on purpose" feeling, and a few violent whacks with a bank stick would have been justified. The 2nd guy would have been, if i could walk on water!!
So off we go again, new rigs, cast out, and sit and wait for a fish which wasn't long in coming. Another flounder of about 500g (1lb)

Again i returned the fish, coz he said it wasn't him in the boat either, he was to busy grubbing around eating my prawns .
............Soggy cigarettes are better than nothing, so i puffed like mad and spat my cold coffee in the sea as Idiot No.2 made my brew cold, i was well happy, NOT!!.

I saw another boat in the distance, coming in my general direction, but i had plenty of time to reel both rods in, should the driver want to join his mates in the idiot's Hall of Fame.

Nope, he changed course and was not going to come over to me and cheese me off.

He headed off to the other side of the harbour, as i had thought.
I stopped rooting in my tackle box, looked up and low and behold, BOAT No3!!

My shouting, waving, dancing and swearing was pointless. So was reeling in, just go for the tip dipping i said to myself and maybe the extra few seconds will just get the line down far enough............. well, one survived, but the other went propeller hugging again.

Three times in 1 and a half hours was hard to believe and i decided that these guys had something wrong with them!

At the time i didn't know it, but along came the 4th and last boat of the day and it all happened again, but when he realized that my line had fouled his propeller he stopped and looked at me with an "oooops" expression on his face. Then drove off round the corner of the jetty, so i could do my twanging bit again. Twang! 2 more rigs gone!!!

Annoyed but chuckling to myself in disbelief, I shouted in the direction that they went, " You wouldn't get away with that in England ya Bastards, you'd get slapped silly and ya boats nicked!!!!!!
I decided that enough was enough and i would move somewhere else and not fish in Sweden's busiest boating lane.

If i'd known that there were going to be 4 boats all doing the same thing, i would have moved after the first idiot pulled a fast one on me and not hung around for the other 3. But i thought it was a "one off" incident, anybody would.

Then i saw some guy walking down the jetty towards me and it turned out to be the captain of Idiot boat No 4 with a handful of line and a couple of leads, that had been wrapped round his propeller. He looked at me in disgust as if it was my fault that his propeller was clogged with fishing line and lead!
I gave him the " you are an absolute dickhead" look, and told him (in a very sarcastic manner) that he was "so very kind to return my tackle to me".

He attempted to give me some advice and told me to use stronger line next time as my line that he had in his hands was too weak, as gave it me back. Talk about rubbing salt into the wounds!! Was this guy for real?
I bit my lip and just his shear audacity restrained me from knocking him out.

I just stared at him as this was obviously a daily event for him and seemed to be the norm.
It just reinforced my thoughts of them.

So what he was saying was, if i would have had stronger line he wouldn't have snagged my line??????? Almost frightening!!

I shook my head in disbelief and off he went with obviously no clue of how close he was to getting thrown in the sea!!!!

I was thinking about another thing he said to me (in swedish, so i only understood a little). He said "That it's alright to fish here now as he was the last boat in, there's no more coming in now".

HOW DID HE KNOW???? Were all these idiots in some sort of idiot boat club, driving around on a mission to annoy, knowing that they are safe in their boats for a clean getaway, just in case some foreigner gets really bloody mad!!!!!

4 times in 2 hours, was unreal and that's my story of surprised by stupidity.
So tell me with your hand on your wallet, if that had happened in Britain, these guys would have had an early bath and bent some bank sticks?

If you're in their way, they'll trash your tackle and think nothing of it.

Only i didn't know this, if i had, then i would have packed my catapult and ball bearings and told the judge that i never saw him your honour!! Or perhaps not gone there in the first place

...........And they all lived happily ever after, because they have boats + most of my reel line, for nowt!! Any questions please, send in writing to the Swedish boat driving, line stealing club, they will probably confirm this story as the truth, just in case you think i typed all this for a bit of a laugh.
Next week i'm going to see if they stop for you while you are on a zebra crossing, just in case they've got cars aswell!!!!!

The lesson learned was: Whatever you are accustomed to in your own country, may not be the custom somewhere else.