Not to jack your thread man but I am in a similar (yet completely different) situation here in Old Orchard Beach. It has been brought to my attention by my fishing buddy, the guy I fish with 99% of the time, that a group of surfers are "looking to have a chat with me." Now before I go and profess my innocence, I will state that I am anything but innocent, but I dont think I'm wrong either. I have a VERY low tolerance for ignorance, and IMO that is exactly what these guys are, IGNORANT. If I show up down the beach and see a bunch of guys surfing, I will go out of my way to make sure I am far enough away that I'm not interfering with them. However, when I am already down the beach fishing, they will think nothing of starting a little ways down from me and eventually end up directly in front of me, falling off their boards and crashing into my line. I have had words with a few of them before but they continue with their arrogance, so I took it to another level. What I do now is just keep on fishing, exactly where I was fishing before, like they're not even there. They get pissed as 4-5 oz pyramid sinkers whiz by their general direction and they throw their hands up in disgust like I'M the asshole. I stand my ground and on a couple of occasions have shouted obscenities at them to get the f**k outta my way as I was here first. It's a big beach, 7 miles long to be exact, so why they have to come and surf in that one spot is beyond me. The guy at the surf shop with whom my buddy spoke to asked, and I quote, "Why do you guys have to fish in THAT spot on the beach?" to which he replied "Hey man, we just fish here 'cause it's right in front of our house." So please tell me, am I wrong in this instance? Should I just suck it up and move if I've already been fishing for however long, 5 minutes, an hour, 5 hours just because these chowder heads feel like they own every wave and inch of the beach? Could I have handled the situation better? Yeah I suppose I could have, but to me it's a blatant act of disregard and disrespect.
P.S. If any one of them had taken 2 minutes to come and talk to me, I would have no problem packing up and moving a little ways down the beach. They claim the "area" I fish in is prime wave territory (or so my buddy tells me) but to me, it looks about the same up and down the beach....but what do I know?