Fishing

Like Bass said, we have all been stolen from and vandalized. There is no escaping "those people". I feel for you as I do the guy on here who had his boat trailer and motor stolen right out of his driveway.
What we need is to break down the barriers with affected land owners and really work to turn in all the scumbags on privite and public land all the time.

As ar as I understand it, what this ruling does is to allow a person to enter the river at a public access point, they may float, fish, hunt, wade or swim in order to use a public waterway for recreation. The act of touching the bottom of the waterway with a vessel, paddle or person is incidental to the recreational use and is there also allowed.If they encounter an obstruction, they may enter the land to go around the obstruction in a manner that has the least impact on the owners use.

This most likely will not effect headwaters on private land any farther upstream than could be walked from the Public access point closest to the property.

This is great news! As to the concerns expressed by landowners, we sportsmen have a new recreation opportunity and responsibility. If any of us sees one of those scumbag types that give us all a bad name, we gotta report them ASAP. If we will all do our part this can work out to everyones benefit. Time was I would personally straighten out those scumbags thinking but now that I'm 68 that action doesn't have the best outcome for me.

I understand your concerns 100%. I am here to tell you that i for one hate the ignorant bastards that feel they have to cut fences, shoot cattle, leave garbage everywhere and destroy property and landowner relations.
For what it's worth, i have all law enforcement agencies phone #'s in my cell phone and i will call them on the first sign of crap like that. I hunted ducks on a stretch of the weber that was private for many years. It was the best mallard shooting i ever had until some idiots did the very things i mentioned above. Now NOBODY can get on the property. I always walked out of there with garbage, empty shells including my own and everyone elses that couldn't pick them up. I fixed fences on said property to prevent cattle from getting out on 3 occasions. I called the sheriff numerous times on tresspassers, litterers, vandals, and the like. Like i said, i don't hesitate. Rest assured that if i am ever on your property or anyone elses for that matter, i will always leave with more than i walked in with(trash etc.) and i will always protect the resource and property the best i can. There are others like me around, but there are also some real pieces of work. If enough people were like me and stood up for these kinds of things, it would be a different game altogether. I don't keep trout very often, and have caught my big fish for mounting so i have no need to keep any more.
So, my advice to you would be to put up a sign listing the pertinent law enforcement phone #'s, ask people to pick up trash and junk, and watch out for illegal activity. You might also do something like they do on the public access waters in wanship and have a sign in box for people who access your property. If you want to do something like this shoot me a pm and i will front the money for the wood and equipment needed to do it. I am sure there are others on here that would volunteer time and money to help out. Let me know.




LDS BFT at its finest!
What a joke!

  That's interesting. I too hunt the Weber for duckies and it's my favorite duck hunt. The Sparkinator and I just love to spy, pull a sneak and jump shoot. Allmost as good as pheasants. I've even got some geese there. I figure I'm real lucky to belong to a small club that owns the property but it costs me a few nickels. Still reasonable to be able to fish and hunt there.
For me, that brings up a few questions - 1) What is the "bed" i.e. high water mark? 2) Are you allowed to retrieve a duckie shot on the river if it goes on the bank? Probably not, right? So it's still is kind of dicey. Best not to do it at all.
P.S. If this has been addressed already in the post I apologize.
Leaky and the Sparkinator
Leaky and the Sparkinator

This ruling does not in any way allow you to trespass accross someone's property to access anything the way I see it. This will allow anyone to float or walk a river from a public access point, and move on to private land to move around an obstruction but that is all. I don't own any private land but respect those who do. Trespassing is trespassing still the way I read this. Why would you ever own land if you couldn't have it for yourself?

your interpertation is pretty likely.
Example:

You will be able to start at the road where Thousand Acres Ranch and Smith-Morehouse road split and be able to walk upstream to fish. You may not drive up the road, get out and TRESSPASS to get to the river, then fish.
You must walk up the river from the public access and you must return down the river to public land to get out.
The only private property that may be touched is the streambed. You may leave the streambed only to get around obstructions and then only in the least impacting way to the land owner.

Kevin's been a friend of mine since grade school. He left a rather enthusiastic message on my home voicemail the day his lawyer called him and told him the news. He doesn't use computers so it would do me no good to point him to this thread. However, I will let him know that the vast majority of the Utah BFT community would like to thank him.

Last Species Caught

Since you don't want to reply or have not had a chance, here is an update on the ideas i told you i would be willing to help out with.
I spoke with the sergent of the Ogden/Northern region office about and his reply was this:
"If a landowner is interested in doing a landowner/public access program tell them to contact our office and state their intent, areas of interest, and their landowner information(location, amount of land, intent and purpose of the land and so forth) and we will be happy to provide all the materials and paper work to do so." They will offer the projects to the Dedicated hunter program and county community services. Let the people who might have done you wrong fix the place up a little and get it all done for free. Just a thought.




LDS BFT at its finest!
What a joke!