New live bait rule: ‘too much justice?'
Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:47 AM CST
Madison - Long-time Eagle River guide and sport shop owner George Langley says the new rule requiring anglers to kill all unused bait before leaving any water body statewide is a case of hitting a nail with a sledgehammer rather than a hammer.
“The angling community really wants to cooperate with the DNR, but they've been pretty harsh,” Langley said. “I haven't heard a lot of support for it. I have heard a lot of grumbling. I do think these rules could have been a little more reasonable.”
Langley is referring to an emergency rules package that took effect Nov. 2 that prohibits anglers from taking live fish - leftover bait minnows, suckers, and other fish - away from any water in Wisconsin.
The rules, approved by the state Natural Resources Board, are aimed at preventing the spread of viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS. The rules do not apply to other kinds of bait, such as leeches or nightcrawlers.
“Probably what's going to happen - and this would be my guess - is there's going to be a fair amount of passive resistance (to the rules),” Langley said. “We hope somebody takes another look at these rules and comes up with something that's a little more enforceable and easier to comply with.”
Langley said he's disappointed that the DNR and NRB would take such a broad brush and paint the whole state with it rather than concentrating on affected areas.
“This time of year, there aren't many fishermen around,” Langley said. “Wait until opening day (next May) and see what happens.”
Langley also is concerned that the rules might impact tourism.
“It won't help,” he said.
DNR Bureau of Fisheries Management Director Mike Staggs said the DNR's original proposal would have enacted the rule only for waters known to have VHS.
“However, the Natural Resources Board was rightly concerned that we have sampled only 50 or so of Wisconsin's 15,000 lakes and - other than the lakes where we've found VHS - we can't tell you for sure whether a lake has VHS or not,” Staggs said.
By the time VHS was discovered and the rules were changed, Staggs said anglers might have been spreading VHS from the affected water for days, weeks, or even months. The NRB, he said, believed it was too big of a risk to the state's $3 billion sport fishery. Staggs said the main concern with reusing minnows is not that the minnows had VHS to begin with - it's that they might pick up VHS while they are being used on one lake and then transferred to another.
Most anglers, he said, change or add water to their minnows from the lake they are fishing, either running water through their baitwells, putting the minnow bucket over the side on a string, or simply scooping new water into the container.
Staggs said an infected fish is the most likely vector for VHS transmission, as opposed to contamination of ice augers, residual amounts of water left in a boat after it is drained, or animals moving from water to water.
“I know that this will be a nuisance and in some cases a non-trivial additional cost for some anglers,” Staggs said. “I do encourage people to keep discussing this issue - both to make sure that people understand what is being done and why, and also to keep generating ideas about better ways to manage the situation and not spread VHS.”
Staggs said he's sure the NRB would be happy to improve the rules as new ideas and information come to light.
“We'll probably know a lot more about where VHS is in the state, and more about how it is spread and infects fish over the next year,” he said.
Staggs said there have been many suggestions about how to keep reusing minnows without spreading VHS. Some examples include allowing minnows to be reused on the same water, or if the angler doesn't add or change the water.
“These are all great ideas and shows that most people want to do the right thing,” Staggs said. “The biggest problem we've had is finding something simple and enforceable for those few people that are not going to do the right thing and potentially spread VHS.
“If some minnows are allowed to be taken away, how does anyone distinguish those minnows from any others?,” he said. “How do you distinguish the bait minnows from those that someone might have actually seined from that water? These are all difficult questions that don't have easy answers, and the NRB felt the simplest, cleanest, and more enforceable answer was simply to not allow live minnows to leave the water.”
Warden enforcement
DNR Chief Warden Randy Stark said the ultimate goal is to protect the fishery and the habitat that supports it from invasive species and disease.
“As with any new rule, we start out with a heavy emphasis on education and warnings, reserving enforcement for those who know better and choose not to follow the law,” Stark said. “This is the course we have taken with these new rules for the past several months, and it has resulted in a high level of awareness about the new rules.”
While continuing the education campaign, wardens will begin to transition into a firmer enforcement stance as they go forward once the level of awareness is higher.
“Of course, as with the enforcement of any law, our wardens apply their judgment and discretion based on the totality of circumstances presented in each situation they encounter,” Stark said.
Given the challenges invasives species and diseases like VHS pose to ecosystems, Stark said institutionalizing bio-security practices into everyone's fishing activities will be critical to maintaining the recreational opportunities and economic benefits Wisconsin anglers are accustomed to.
“We believe that making bio-security procedures as much a part of the fishing experience as baiting the hook is a key element,” Stark said. “In the end, our overall success as a community in protecting the fishery that means so much to us turns on the individual actions of many, including boaters, anglers, fish farmers, and bait dealers.”
Live minnows
on Big Green
For the first time in what fourth-generation guide Mike Norton believes to be about 35 years, live minnows will be legal for deep-water fishing on Big Green Lake this winter.
Pieces of Lake Michigan chubs are the preferred cut bait used to attract the lake trout and ciscoes that fuel a solid winter ice fishery on Big Green. However, because Lake Michigan is a VHS-positive water, chubs won't be allowed as bait.
That, in turn, prompted a change in the rules to allow live minnows this winter.
“Whether people are going to flock in, I'm not sure,” Norton said. “We have such a nice population, I'd hate to see them overharvested. Trout are a lot more important to us in summer than in winter.”
Big Green's daily bag limit is two lakers longer than 17 inches. Three brown trout, with a 14-inch minimum, may be kept daily. Norton said 3- to 4-inch shiners - and more than one on a hook - might become the bait of choice this winter.
Norton said live bait has been fairly expensive this year, but he hasn't seen any major hike in the prices due to VHS yet. With the new rules on disposal of unused minnows, he thinks anglers will be more conservative on how many they buy.
For the latest updates on VHS, visit dnr.wi.gov/fish/pages/vhs.html.
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Topic: New live bait rule: ‘too much justice? (Read 2019 times)
