No, you're right. I've thought about this a lot lately and I truly think a lot of it is there are just way more inexperienced boaters on the water now than 10-15 years ago. Not everybody grew up starting in a flat bottom, then a stick steer, then a small bass boat. Now days, people are starting out in 75 mph fiberglass rockets, carrying 250 lbs of explosives, with no brakes. Not a good scenario and I'm surprised there hasn't been more accidents.

The courtesy and etiquette on the water is just not there like it was. I was on Rayburn a couple of weeks ago during that High School Tourney, 400 plus boats I think? Fishing in an area that was full of teams, I chose the very windy side of a gut to stay out of their way. I look up, and here's a small boat, with a kid sitting on the front pedestal, the guy driving at the speed that the boat is trying to get on plane. There were stumps where they were driving, if they'd hit one, that kid would have went for a swim. Bad deal #1. They then decided they wanted to fish a bush that was about 100' in front of where I was working towards, they pull up, shut it down and start fishing. Bad Deal #2. I thought long and hard about that. On one hand, I applaud the gentleman for taking those 2 boys out for that tournament, on the other hand, complete lack of safety and complete lack of etiquette. I could not decide if I should politely tell them that doing that was not a good way to act, or just let it go and let those 2 boys think that was ok. I chose to just turn around, I figured that them fishing that day was more important than me calling out their idiot driver.

I wish that there was a way to get people to understand some basic courtesy on the water, but I'm not sure there is.

If you stay in tiger fishing a beetle spin you don't have that problem. Its kind of ironic that the person that doesn't give anyone respect when they ask for a little advice is now complaining about not getting any respect. Funny how that works out.