Fishing has long been, and still is, a popular past time for many.

What our species once had to do in order to survive, is now a basic hobby that many people enjoy.

But there’s a lot of problems with fishing. Not only is it unethical and causes pain to the animals that are caught, irresponsible fishing can also cause harm to other animals and ecosystems – and in some instances, people too.

So when the guy in this story thought someone had left their fishing line behind, he played good citizen and reeled it in.

But what happened next made him wonder if he should’ve just left it behind.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA when I pulled out some kid’s fishing line on a public beach?

Recently I was at a public beach in Texas.

The water here is very shallow, and you can walk quite a ways without reaching any deeper than maybe four to five feet.

I was walking with my sister, maybe two or three hundred feet from shore (we are both adults).

At this time the beach was crowded enough that there were no public cabanas left, and you could not walk more than twenty to thirty feet without passing another party of beach goers.

Let’s see what happened as they continued their walk.

I felt something brush across my chest that felt like fishing line, but didn’t think much of it. Then my sister lifted a section of line out of the water with kind of a perplexed expression.

At this time there were plenty of people fishing, but they walked way out past the swimmers. My first thought was someone lost their line and I should see if I can coil it up and toss it.

After I had coiled about thirty feet around my arm, I was pretty sure it was intentional but still had no clue what it was.

I start walking back to shore, and I’m guessing I had maybe three hundred feet of line in my hand by the time I got to the surf. There was definitely something on the end, but I hadn’t pulled it up yet.

And he had a bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

At this time here’s what I was thinking: whatever this is, it was obviously intentional.

But since the beach was crowded with families and kids I was 50/50 on whether it was something that someone forgot to pull in or someone was gonna start yelling at me.

Either way, whatever it was, it was multiple hundreds of feet of fishing line drifting across a huge swathe of public beach.

Conclusion, I didn’t think this was safe so I erred on the side of “see something, say something” and made the decision to pull it in and deal with any consequences later.

Read on to find out what happened next.

Sure enough about nine kids, maybe ranging from eight to thirteen, came running over yelling at me to stop. At about this time I had just about found the end.

I asked the kids if they knew what it was while proceeding to finish pulling it onto the beach; it was their fishing line. At the end was a three to four foot section of line with several pieces of cut up fish on large hooks.

I didn’t look closely at it and do not fish.

I returned the line to the kids. I told them this did not seem safe, considering how many people could be affected and how far this thing was drifting.

So he decided to stand his ground.

A few of them ran over to a tent of parents (presumably). I walked over and explained my reasoning, one of them said “we wouldn’t be letting them do it if it wasn’t allowed.”

The group as a whole did not seem eager to engage and nobody said anything else.

At this point I was second guessing the situation. I was not happy to be ruining a bunch of kids fun, and if it was allowed I was about to feel like an *******.

I still did not think it seemed safe, but then I don’t fish at all or go to the beach very often.

And he was left feeling quite disconcerted.

The kids gave me dirty looks for a while, the parents glanced over once in a while but never came over to talk again.

I spoke to person at the office and he said what I was describing was absolutely not allowed, fishers were required to keep lines away from other people.

AITA?

From the kids to their disinterested, uncaring parents, there were a lot of people in the wrong here.

But this man, who potentially even saved a swimmer or another kid on the beach from getting hurt, was not one of them.

It’s not even about rules it’s about common sense, and that dictates that what the kids were doing was totally unsafe.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about it.

This person agreed that the kids and their parents were out of order, explaining many ways in which the public could have got hurt.

And as others emphasised, the risk to other wildlife was huge, too.

Meanwhile, this Redditor pointed out that the kids were putting themselves in danger too.

The way that these kids were fishing was not only selfish, it was completely dangerous and extremely entitled.

And with parents like theirs, it’s no wonder.

While the kids and their parents might have made him feel bad, this guy could likely have saved another beach goer, a kid, some wildlife, or even the fishers themselves from getting hurt.

He’s a hero.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.