By Bob Hodge

Marc Cooper has become a bit of a prospector over the past two years, but he’s not looking for gold nuggets or trying to uncover the next Comstock Load. He’s prospecting for trophy blue catfish.

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Although he packs fishing tackle and bait instead of a pickaxe and pans, like the old prospectors, Cooper has learned how to read a map and look for the proper signs. Finding 80-plus pound catfish hiding beneath hundreds of thousands of acres of water is akin to finding gold flakes among the rocks and sand in a river.

And, like in the old gold rush days, he has a problem with claim jumpers.

Cooper has noticed a growing trend among some of his fellow fishermen as ever-more sophisticated electronics have become a part of fishing: With one push of a GPS button they can lock in on the exact fishing spot that may have taken him days or weeks to find.

“Researching topography is the fun part for me,” Cooper said. “I love the thrill of solving the problem and being rewarded with a giant catfish. For others, it’s not the same.”

Fishermen have always been secretive about good fishing spots because even the best can be fished down to nothing. They become doubly secretive when they’ve put in the work to create a brushpile or other habitat that isn’t readily identifiable from the surface, or like Cooper, spend hours on the water before ever wetting a hook.

But Cooper said the way that some fishermen are going about “learning” how to catch the mega-sized catfish he’s chasing is getting a little frustrating. He took to Facebook with a post about catching catfish on a new spot one day and then saw pictures posted of other fishermen “wearing it out” a few days later.

Cooper isn’t alone in being a little leery of fishermen who happen to pull in close when he’s landing a fish. The Facebook post drew a big crowd of other anglers who have experienced the same thing, one referring to boaters “waving with the right hand while they are pushing GPS buttons with their left.”

At least in the old days the spot jumpers had to try the best-guess method of getting back on someone else’s fishing hole. And, of course, there are fishermen who are looking for the same types of structure, current, etc., Cooper is after.

“It is true that other people can also find something that you have spent diligent effort researching and fishing,” he said. “But when you see someone drive by while you’re fishing a piece of cover on a small break-line in the middle of the lake and watch them hit a waypoint on their GPS … then you know something is fishy.”

Since the waters Cooper is fishing are public, he can’t put up a floating no trespassing sign. Landowners around Fort Loudoun Lake found out a few years ago that trying to rope off coves – even those totally surrounded by private property – was a no-no, so there’s really nothing to keep one fisherman off another’s spot but common courtesy.

It’s no different than hunters who frequent public land and, at one time or another, have come across the same hunting spot as somebody else.

“As of late it’s becoming a very common occurrence,” said Cooper, who has actually talked with some of the fishermen who he has encountered on a prized spot.

“You are always met with the same bombast and rhetoric when you confront someone who has obviously stolen a fishing location from you or someone else,” he said. “They act, or attempt to act, that they have no clue what you are referring to or they have been ‘fishing that spot for years.’ ”

While Cooper finds the behavior irritating, he said he’s more sympathetic toward people who have the same problem, but are actually on the lake trying to make a living.

Some local guides turn their boats into floating advertisements because they attract potential customers. Others try to go about their work anonymously because they also tend to attract potential spot jumpers.

“I can also see certain locations on a lake to be a source of a competitive advantage, especially for guides,” Cooper said. “You could say it’s a form of intellectual property as well, but quantifying it is almost impossible.”

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