Here's the other side- A lot of fishermen aren't as good at flipping or dock shooting as they'd like to be and their rigs wind up on top of the dock instead of under it. Then you wind up with hooks and bait on the dock. If you're lucky, it's a nuisance. If you're not lucky, you wind up with a hook in your foot. If you REALLY unlucky, you wind up with a dog that ate a baited hook and now needs surgery.

There was a fellow in Tampa who had a dandy dock on the edge of a channel. When the water was ripping through there, all of creation would stack up under his dock. A well-placed livebait would almost guarantee a fish. The man who owned the dock was a fisherman and a genuinely nice guy. He was supporting of local anglers and understood that his dock was in the middle of public domain. He became less friendly when his Golden kept taking trips to the Vet's office because he ate baited hooks. He did what he could to check the dock before he let the dog out, but a dog's sense of smell is much stronger than our sense of sight. Eventually, he strung ships rope between is pilings to discourage anglers. It just got to be too much.