While normally staying in the middle at a reasonable speed, smiling at those fishermen who make I contact and saying 'How do' to all we have always been amazed that these people are allowed to do the dangling dripping maggot bit over our heads. I wrote to BW about it once and was told that their fishing expert (Mr Fisher - and he really did exist!) said that one fisherman hanging the maggot over other fishermen was considered dangerous as it might have his eye out but he considered it was not dangerous when done over boaters.
Since then BW brought out a fishing code and for the most part most fishermen took the suggestion (but not order) to withdraw. This suggestion was not followed by a don't dangle bit unfortunately. Still most do now withdraw rather than dangle - but as some leave it to the last second before getting the rod out of the way one way or the other we tend to start taking avoiding action before reaching such people just in case. Our avoiding action takes into account that the one bloke who will not be damaged by the hanging hook/maggot is the bloke controlling the rod. So we alter course to pass as close to him and his keep net as possible. If the rod is withdrawn we turn away if not we go within feet of him. This seems to work for our safety and, of course we are not ruining his swim. The only annoying thing is that having gone in this close our course back out course the next man in line often has to pull his shortened rod/line back to avoid us when, had we suffered the dangling maggot he would not.
