Education is going on all over in the world of fishing. Fishing Kids and Go Play Outside and the Wildlife Coalition are just a few examples of introducing kids to fishing with good practices. WDFW hands out thousands of those little sticks to release fish and teaches people how to do it. WDFW people will be helping in areas 5 & 6 in a short few weeks to see if the C&R experiment can work on a broader scale. Catch and release of wild fish is really critical to the future of sports fishing. In my work with kids I notice that the parents strongly mention releasing the fish because they know it is the politically correct thing to do. They don't , for the most part, understand why or how. Even when their kids have a trout hooked deep in the gullet they tell them to release it. Releasing trout caught on Power Bait is obviously a joke. I would say more than 50% of the people who fish know very little about the rules and the sport in general. Education will help all of that and it is happening all over. My work with PSA allows me to reach out to a ton of people to teach them to be good stewards of the resource. For me the rhetoric stays on PP and the real good is done in the real world.

CFM, if you're filling 3 to 5 punchcards annually, no reason you can't pony up the small sum of $10 per card. When you use the resource to that extent it should cost more.

Skydriftin

Apparently you must be into "speed reading" because you had obviously missed the point! The issue was not "about money" (Though I could make that issue too) the issue was about the misconception that was used by WDFW to get the legislation passed to get that "extra" money.

I know a ton of fishermen and the guys that were concerned about paying for additional salmon cards; have already figured out how to "beat" that one! The law allows them to get free "additional salmon cards" up to and until July1 2003. I known of several people who have already gotten at lease 3 additional salmon cards, and it was done legaly. Personally, I didn't do so because I have learned never to count all your eggs before they have hatched, so why worry about getting extra cards when I haven't even filled out my first card yet.

Apparently you also missed my point about filling out extra salmon cards on the Cowlitz. Like I said before, WDFW spends next to nothing on the Cowlitz River fish hatcheries that produce those huge runs of Coho on the Cowlitz River. Why should WDFW be able to charge a person for an extra salmon card when Tacoma Power pays 100% of the cost to raise and release these coho salmon? If the State were the ones who were picking up the tab, then that would be a whole different story!

Rob:

WDFW already make you "quit" fishing for salmon once you have caught your limit of adults in our rivers, so what's the big deal if they included steelhead too? Get your 2 or 3 fish and you are done unless you hold a "special hook and release card" and then you can continue fishing for wild steelhead

THINK OF ALL THOSE STEELHEAD SMOLTS THAT WOULDN'T BE GETTING HOOKED when a fisher has gotten his limit and has to stop fishing!


Cowlitzfisherman

Cowlitz... this is getting to institutionalized. and i think it's best as it is right now.
However if guys are getting free additional harvest cards, then the cnr cards should be free as well..

really what needs to happen is that there should be a harvested and a released box to fill in on the card itself ( i believe they did that one year). Then if you fill out a card you go get a new one.

Also cards and licenses should not be sold to anyone who hasn;t turned in the previous years card..

No Rob,

I disagree with you! I think that we should all purchase c&r cards if we are going to be fishing in special c&r streams, seasons or areas. If we are spending millions of dollars of our wildlife funds for the protecting of wild fish, then the people who are doing the most damages to them (the c&r users) should only be paying a larger share. Fare is fair! I myself would choose to leave the wild fish alone, and spend all my efforts targeting those rotten hatchery fish. I would gladly be willing to pay $10 more for that "special wild fish" punch card if I was going to be fishing for those wild depress fish.

So why wouldn't it be fair and also "the right thing to do", for those of us who are causing all that hooking mortality to our "wild fish" to only pay more for their recovery?

Why wouldn't it be just as fare to do that as it was to put that additional fee for and extra salmon card? After all, it would only apply to those that do the damage and the money could go right into that "magic wildlife fund" and be spent just like the new additional $10 tag money will be spent.



Cowlitzfisherman

Well we could argue for years on hooking mortality and what studies to use but I like the canadian studies on steelhead because they are the most similiar to the fishing I do but in that case thoes using barbed hooks, treble hooks or bait should be paying a far greater share because thats where almost all hooking mortality comes from. I fish all barbless all singles and no bait since i have been doing so i feel extremely confident in saying that i have killed 0 wild fish and threfore have had 0 impact and should have to pay nothing.. ( if your going to base it off impact)

CRF, thanks for the tip on the free punchcards.

Saying that your fishing methods have NO impact Rob is disingenuous. Less impact , yes, no impact no. Don't set yourself up as a special case.