Tradition has it that Labor Day is the end of the boating season. This is not a traditional year!

Last weekend while fishing a club tournament at Jackson I was shocked at the number of barges still on the lake. I consider boats that don’t plane off, that just plow through the water making a huge wake, a barge.

Although they are great for skiing and they don’t really bother me when they are out on the lake, for some reason some drivers think they have to stay near the bank and get as close as possible to fishermen. That does cause problems.

One boat at Jackson just before noon was not only being inconsiderate, they were breaking the law. I was fishing a long point in Tussahaw Creek and had put a marker out about 100 yards from the bank where the point dropped from ten feet deep into deeper water. From my marker back to the bank the bottom slowly sloped off.

There was one boat that came between me and the bank about 75 feet off the bank. I have no idea how they didn’t hit the bottom. This big boat was plowing along about 25 miles an hour making a wake at least four feet high. And no one was behind the boat skiing.

Not only did they rock me a lot, they went by a dock with pontoon boat tied to it. They were within 50 feet of the dock. Georgia law says boats must stay at least 100 feet from a dock unless at idle speed. When the barge went by the dock I though its wake would tear up the pontoon boat.

They kept going along the bank like that as far as I could see them. At weigh-in I mentioned it and another club member said that same boat came by him just like that, way up the Alcovy River. Apparently the folks in that boat ran the whole shoreline of Jackson Lake just like that. I wonder how many boats they damaged that were tied to docks.

I expect pleasure boaters to be inconsiderate of fishermen, but I find no excuse for someone in a fishing boat to do that. While on that same point in Tussahaw creek a bass boat was puling tubers. For some reason their route made them circle over the point I was fishing rather than go 100 yards to more open water. They circled within feet of my marker, some times when I was within casting distance of it, repeatedly.

The fun did not end at the ramp. We were taking out at 1:30 at the Georgia Power Ramp. There is a double ramp there with docks on each side. When I pulled up someone in a pontoon was tied to the dock, completely blocking one ramp. I watched as they finally got a trailer backed in and started trying to load it as two or three boats either launched or took out from the one ramp they left open.

In the meantime three teenage boys had pulled to the top of the ramp. They were waiting to put their bass boat in. They started yelling at the older men having trouble with the pontoon, fussing at them for being so slow, I think.

When the pontoon finally moved the teenagers got their boat backed into the water after several tries. For some unknown reason one of them was wading along beside it. He finally got into the boat and, after several minutes, got it cranked.

He kept trying to back it off the trailer but it would not move. He yelled at the truck driver to back in further and kept having problems. He finally had the diver pull up on the ramp so he could get out of the boat, walk around to the back of it and unhook his rear tiedowns.

One of these days it will be cold enough to make some folks stay home. I won’t miss the comedy.