The day that I have long dreaded will become a reality this Saturday. Anglers will be allowed to harvest two wild coastal cutthroat trout beginning that day.
A lot of us worked our asses off tying to get the commission to see the folly in this harvest but it was to no avail. "Angling opportunity" won the day and it will be a sad and shitty day this Saturday.
Will I ever see a day that I can just enjoy fly fishing? A day when one won't have to worry about a state agency, that was charged with protecting our wild fish, doing everything they can to destroy wild salmon trout and steelhead? I know there won't! There will always be those that cannot see beyond saving their own miserable ass among the bureaucrats and fish biologists wannabe at ODFW. There will always be those who only see a wild fish as something to kill and it will always be up to those who are willing to do more than lip service to protect these wild fish.
So to those of you that care, and I know there are many that read this blog who truly do care and I consider you my friends and comrades in fight for this wild resource.
To those of you that are salivating like Pavlov's dog at the thought of a few tasty trout all I can say and putting it as bluntly as I can you are the enemy. You are just as complicit as ODFW is in the destruction of this last wild coastal trout.
To those of you that just don't care and could not be bothered you are the worst of the lot because you stand for nothing and the thought of you actually have to make sacrifice for wild trout is too much for you to fahtom.
Yes folks those wild coastal cutthroat trout are so abundant that the ODFW commssion decided to ring the dinner bell! Man oh man the thought of a couple of tasty eight inch cutthroat trout makes my mouth water doesn't it make yours water too?
Hey while we're at it let's kill a few wild winter steelhead on the North Umpqua too! I need to pound my chest a little and make sure the world knows that the hunter/gatherer instinct is still there.
I know this all sounds silly and sarcastic but in truth that is what is being said amongst the various bureaucrats and suits at Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. These harvest regulations are now reality. With chinook salmon populations crashing and the Columbia and Willamette closed for angling for spring chinook and a general malaise statewide about the current condition of our fisheries ODFW has the audacity to forward a harvest on declining wild fish populations? The pro-kill crowd will tell you that the wild winter steelhead in the Umpqua system are in such great numbers that the system can indeed sustain a kill fishery! Wasn't it just last fall that they said otherwise and shut down the harvest of wild steelhead? Which is it?
So it boils down to who you have faith in? ODFW, who is in desperate financial straits and needs to sell licenses to make up for budget shortfalls, or do you believe the scientists and unbiased fish biologists who have nothing to gain by saying a wild population should not have any harvest?
I believe I'll make the right choice and choose to believe those who really care about the resource and I hope you will also.
When I discuss catch and release angling, which I generally practice but not always with people who just can't understand the point of fishing without keeping your catch I normally just ask them:
ReplyDeleteDo you eat golf balls? What about your fantasy football team?
Helps them to understand it.