I just got off the phone with a WDFW biologist and I wanted his opinion of fishing Day Lake and Texas Ponds. He informed me that Texas Ponds are open, but Day Lake is gated all year now. I also saw the closing of the gates at Fontal and King this weekend.

He got into a discussion with me about the need for more citizen involvement to get these gates back open! DNR and the Logging companies, according to him, closing the gates with lines like fire prevention, to discourage refuse dumping and environmental damage, but the problem is that these gates don't come back open all too often.

The Timber Companies have a public responsibility to see that these gates allow reasonable access to their land. They are recieving tax breaks from the state due to the claim that these lands are open to the public when logging is not active. DNR is also to work for the interests of the public, including the fishing public, not just lock down land without a public use plan.

It was also said that as fishermen we might do well to contact the Outdoors editors for the Times and PI and see if we could get them to run a story on the problem of decling access to mid-elevation lakes.

Your thoughts?

So where do we start. I do not have enough personal experience with locked gates in my way but I would certainly like to access some of the lakes on logging company land. These resources are ours just as much as the states and logging companies! Do we have a list of these locked lakes?