02-17-2004, 03:45 AM
Marking fishing holes an ethics issue The Grand Rapids Press reports that when Rep. Michael Sak, D-Grand Rapids, called last fall to say he wanted to amend current laws in order to keep anglers from denying others access to prime fishing holes, one might have thought he was overreacting. The issue initially seemed to be a local problem, something that might be handled by just airing the issue publicly. Not so. Sak introduced legislation last week to make it illegal to mark a fishing hole with a buoy unless an angler, guide or his client is actively fishing the hole. It is simple legislation that may require some tweaking, but Sak is on the right track. "What this will do is clarify just what people can and can not do," he said. "People shouldn't have the right to go out and mark a spot and deny other anglers the right to fish that spot when they are not there actively fishing it." "Rep. Sue Tabor (R-Delta Township) has said she is willing to hold committee meetings on the bill which will allow for some dialogue, clarification and debate." That public discussion will be worth a lot. This contentious issue surfaced last summer when Press reporter Howard Meyerson wrote about the problem on the Muskegon and St. Joseph Rivers where a couple of commercial fishing guides had been using floating buoys to reserve fishing holes. They marked them while they ran downstream to land a fish, or they marked them as their own so they could fish it later once their client arrived. In both cases, they intended to keep others out. Recreational anglers and other guides got pretty steamed. It was the guides' audacity that got people riled. These men make their living off a public resource, funded mostly by recreational angler's dollars. But rather than foster an air of grateful cooperation, they unleashed the ugly specter of personal avarice. Most anglers cooperate with each other and extend one another some basic courtesy. Step away from a fishing hole to land a fish and most will respect another's space on the river. The guides in question, however, might be gone from sight for 20 to 30 minutes. Then they would return and insist that new anglers vacate their marked spot. It was unacceptable behavior. Private profits do not trump public fishing rights on public waters. There is nothing illegal about marking a spot. The issue until now has been one of angler ethics. The DNR believes a new law is unnecessary. "We think we have a statute in place to deal with this issue -- the angler harassment law," said Dennis Knapp, the legislative liaison for the DNR. "We don't feel we need an additional statute to deal with an issue like this." Lt. Dave Pearl with the DNR's law enforcement division said the angler harassment law makes it illegal for a person to intentionally or knowingly block or impede or harass another who is lawfully fishing. The law's original intent was to protect anglers from harassment by animal rights supporters. "It would hold up if someone was trying to prevent another from fishing a particular hole," Pearl said. That includes the situation of a fishing guide returning to a hole after 20 minutes and telling another they had to leave. On the other hand, the current law does not address the practice of dropping a buoy to mark a fishing hole, nor the obstruction to fishing caused because its anchor line would likely snag any fishing line drifting through. In that case, Pearl said anglers have other recourse. "If no one is around, then it's been abandoned," he said. "You can pull it up and put it in your boat ... just don't throw it on shore. That's littering. "We don't want to create a confrontation between anglers. If someone marks a hole and you want to fish it and they say, 'That's my marker.' then the thing to do is contact a law enforcement agency," Pearl said. Doing that, of course, means hours before any action could be taken. It assumes anglers have cell phones or that guilty parties will stick around or could be identified. It presumes a conservation officer has time to investigate. It assumes that driftboat anglers who complain can specify the bend on the river where the confrontation took place. That's a lot of maybes, and not much hard result. It would be far simpler to change the law and make the practice a no-no. Source: Grand Rapids Press [signature]
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