Meeting with the DNR Tonight
Tonight was the annual meeting of area guides with our area DNR fisheries folks. This is always interesting and an opportunity to talk one on one after the general session with the folks who have their finger on the pulse of what's going on in our region. As mentioned in my thread about spring hearings there is a lot to chew on. Many of the DNR officials shared my concerns about rules that are written in a very general sense. If we "dumb down" our regulations by supporting the idea that the whole state should run on one set of regulations you can kiss off the stuff that took years of effort to implement in hopes of creating a better fishery. Our system works slow enough as it is and the new format of having regulations changes on the ballot every other year is going to add yet another year into the mix of how long it takes to make changes that can significantly impact our resources. This is just way too slow. In many cases by the time a problem is recognized it will take a year of research and legwork to get a proposal on board. After that it will have to go through the current cycle in which it's a three year process to change or institute a new reg. Now if you take into account another year (if it happens to fall on an "advisory only" year you have a minimum of 4 years and possibly as much as 5 between the time a problem is recognized and something even starts to be done about it. In many cases at that point you're starting from scratch which may be damaged almost beyond repair. We have a great state with some great resources but in my opinion a horsesh*t way of managing them.
Ok, enough soapbox time. I'd just like to encourage all to read the proposals, THINK about them and then do the right thing and show up to vote next Monday at the hearings. I hope you'll take some time to look over the stuff I've posted so far about some of the questions and feel free to add your comments and questions. I'll try to get more stuff up there in the next couple days.
Finally, thanks to the Headwaters Muskies Inc. Chapter for hosting this annual meeting and the DNR guys who show up and bravely tackle the questions we throw at them.
