If those pilings could talk. Photo: Jeremy Bishop//Unsplash
Surfers versus fishermen. While there is a lot of crossover between the two, you can usually only do one activity at a time and boy, oh boy, do the two not mix when they’re in the same space. That, of course, happens on the daily at any pier on any coast.
But whose pier is it?
We’ll circle back to that one later, but first we’ll watch one surfer give his side of the very thing we all fear happening the moment we paddle near pier pilings. Huntington Beach, California’s Willy Dobrenen felt a tug on his arm one day while paddling near the world-famous pier only to notice he had a hook in his wrist. Not in the cuff of his wetsuit, in his wrist. His response wasn’t much different from what most of us would have done in that moment hoping to get the attention of the person on the other end of that fishing line: “Let the string out! F***ing idiot!”
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That fisherman didn’t let the line out. Maybe he thought he’d snagged something big next to the pier. Technically, he did, but you get what I’m saying. And so he kept reeling Dobrenen in. Willy was left with no other option but to cut the line with his teeth while he flailed in the surf. The footage went viral and as Willy puts it, plenty of surfers and fishermen “got to know each other in the comments section,” which is code for exactly what you imagine going down in any comments section: people losing sleep and racking up screen time in an argument.
Huntington Beach Pier is a hub for this very scenario. Surfers have brought the issue to city council over the years and the first rule in Surf City is that the pier is a multi-use space. Since that regularly creates conflict, the city tends to put the responsibility on fishermen to move their lines for surfers when there’s a safety concern.
