Head Hunter

Obama Fishing Ban?

Okay so the title of the blog probably got your attention. And I will admit that it's a bit sensationalized to grab your focus.

However, had I written this blog just a few short weeks ago, that headline would not have ended with a question mark. It would have ended with a period. Because all indications were that bans were coming to the Great Lakes thanks to the creation of the Interagency Ocean Policy Taskforce.

The taskforce was created by President Obama last June. The purpose of the taskforce is "To succeed in protecting the oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes, the United States needs to act within a unifying framework under a clear national policy, including a comprehensive, ecosystem-based framework for the long-term conservation and use of our resources."

Those who live in areas where NOAA and the federal government have been "managing" ocean fisheries, immediately raised a red flag when they saw that the Great Lakes were included. For several years, coastal anglers have seen incredible reductions in fishing access at the hands of the government. From the creation of "sanctuary" areas where fishing is not allowed -- including recreational anglers -- to closures based on science that's outdated at best, simply flawed at worst, coastal anglers have seen devastating blows levied.

And now the government created a task force that includes the Great Lakes and its tributaries.

Chris Horton, a former fisheries biologist, is the Conservation Director for the Bass Anglers' Sportsman's Society which is owned by ESPN. Horton is one of the most respected conservation voices and legislative analysts in the fishing industry. He does not sensationalize. He does not overstate things. What he does is his job and he does it very, very well.

Here's what he had to say:

"It's time for fishermen to pay attention," said Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS. "Right now, this is all an administrative directive with no accountability or oversight and no real public input, and that's scary."

Scary it was. The first draft to come out of the task force was releasd Sept. 10 and  had plenty of references to "overfishing" and made absolutely no distinctions between recreational fishing and commercial fishing. Those facts made it abundantly clear that the administration and the task force either had absolutely no one participating from the recreational fishing world or intended to lump the two together in an effort to mimic the type of access elimination and closures they had already implemented in the southeast.

Even worse was the fact that the task force had completely ignored the comments and recommendations from the sportfishing industry. Here's a comment from Robert Montgomery's excellent series on this issue: 

"We are completely baffled as to why the task force failed to acknowledge or include any mention of the key aspects of recreational fishing that were presented to them in detail on more than one occasion," said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano American Corp./Shimano Canada Ltd. "The significant number of jobs and the economy that more than 60 million American anglers support, and the major conservation efforts by people who fish in all regions of the country, were completely ignored.

"No distinction between the obvious dramatic differences between recreational fishing and commercial harvest methods was made."

Let's fast forward a bit. This week, Robert Montgomery posted another article about the issue on ESPNoutdoors.com and it really got the attention of people. ESPN later amended the story and said it should have been more clearly labeled as an opinion piece. And that's fine -- it is an opinion piece. And it's the opinion of some pretty respected people in the fishing industry that the Obama administration and this taskforce intends to create a giant government mess of the Great Lakes by imposing its will in an area that it's not warranted. There are very valid concerns that the task force intends to drop a blanket management plan designed for ocean coastal areas over the Great Lakes. Does it make sense to do that? Of course not. But, hey, this is a government deal. Common sense usually need not apply.

This is an issue MUCC will be keeping an eye on and participating in where appropriate. But this is also an issue that the angling public absolutely must be involved with. We must contact legislators. We must make our voices heard.

The fact that Montgomery's story sparked a flurry of public relations spin by the Obama administration should tell us a lot -- they do worry about the perception they have within the angling community. And they should because we carry an awful lot of votes. But what we must be very careful of is that we don't just fall for a smoke and mirrors act. We can't simply take their "We have no intention of banning fishing" at face value.

Becuase, after all, this is the same administration that vowed to have a zero tolerance policy on invasive species. And yet we still have the potential for asian carp to swim through a lock in Chicago and into Lake Michigan.

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