To get right of way becouse you are hindered by fishing equipment, you need to show the proper day signals as you do at night with lanterns. In this case, it was not obvious that they was fishing, did not fly any signals, and thus can not claim that the cat should have understood that they was fishing (might be some vessel size limitations on this). The least they could have done was to shout a warning and show their fishing-rods.

Routing this to the insurance companies is probably the best answer. De-fuses the situation and leaves it to a third party to decide what should be done. If the fisherman dont accept that, call the cops and ask for help.