On the fishing opener and the weeks that followed, I’ve seen enough to repost this article with a few changes for reasons you will never understand. I have seen mass confusion at the boat landing and some of that confusion is understandable, others are unacceptable. There are unwritten rules while unloading and loading boats at a launch that I guess (only a few) people do not know.

There are times where I believe you should be patient, and I put those into THREE CATEGORIES. 1) Owners of a new boat, who have never launched a boat before. 2) People that only use their boats a few times a year but get nervous if the ramp is busy. 3) The family or anglers that goes on a fishing trip once a year.  These folks might even forget to put the plug in their boat and need to put it back on the trailer. There are a few other reasons, like strong winds, or a person is by their self. For those people, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND.

Then there are the people I put into the UNACCEPTABLE CATEGORY. These are the people that DON’T care if they are holding up a line at a boat ramp. I have recently witnessed A FEW anglers unloading their boats at the ramp, remove the boats cover, engine support, take off the transom tie downs, insert the drain plug, then unhook the winch strap. And doing so while other anglers were waiting to launch their boats. For those people, there are areas that ALL THIS CAN BE DONE before driving to the boat ramp.

I have also seen this happen in reverse. People removing their boat from the lake and DO NOT care if others are waiting to do the same. Some have blocked the ramp while a friend walked to get the trailer. Does it bother them that others had already retrieved their trails and their buddy is 20 yards off the boat ramp waiting to pull their boats out of the water? NOT AT ALL. 

It’s not hard to be respectful of another angler/boater. When unloading boats, it is not difficult to prepare a boat away from the ramp and when you’re ready just unhook the winch strap, trim up the motor, back into the water, start the engine and back off the trailer and move to the side of the dock so other can also. The same goes when loading a boat. Once on the trailer and the winch strap is applied, move the boat away from the ramp to another area and finish whatever he had left to do.

As I wrote above, there are times we need to have patients at a boat ramp, because the people putting in or taking out that might be novice and or nervous for one reason or the other. There are some people that will not except this but, there is NOTHING WRONG with offering assistance or friendly advice instead of getting pissed off. I have backed trailers in for people and even winched their boats on the trailer for them because they were having a little trouble.

Years ago, I remember my first few times backing down a ramp and holding people up because I was being careful and I’m sure others have too.