Quote:
Originally Posted by BassYakR
A part of me wants to agree with you Smalls.... but then the Selfish part wants to argue with you... bc i want it to be better for me. At least charge a 20 dollar fee to launch... that will keep alot of ppl away... then use that money to enforce a slot limit for at least 5 years....
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I don't know what kind of hoops they have to jump through to charge you to use it though. I mean, its public land. I guess it would be no different than the requirement to have a WMA license to hunt a WMA, but that is a one time fee.
Plus, when you start introducing a fee, you are going to have opposition from the people that have always fished it without having to pay. That causes issues. People aren't going to like it. The fishermen may be the most vocal now, but if you start charging a few and it drives people away, they won't be for long.
Wildlife and Fisheries could quit stocking it tomorrow, and it wouldn't bother me. Plenty of places to catch fish. Yeah, its nice having a place to catch big fish, but I've never been all about that myself.
I found a report online about meetings they had about the fishing in Lacassine back in 2003. Got about 40 fishermen together to talk about their concerns with Lacassine, what they would like to see, etc. Got a lot of good feedback about slot limits, tournaments, charging a fee, water level management, etc.
End result of the report: still going to manage it for waterfowl. It doesn't matter what people want to be done out there. All that matters is what the legislation that set Lacassine up back in 1937 says, and its expressed intent was to manage for "WATERFOWL and other wildlife". They manage it for everything, but waterfowl is the focal group.
I think there was something in that report about fishermen wanting to start a group to help the refuge, but only IF this was done and that was done and budgets weren't going to be cut. No manager can guarantee that.