Anti-fishing groups come at us from different angles

I guess I would say it doesn’t surprise me, but it does kind of shock me to see the extremes certain groups or individuals in our society have gone. Anti-fishing, for example. I mean what and how is the justification in a stance like that? I will not cover their specific talking points.

There are countless videos online of anti-fishing types challenging, berating and harassing people fishing available on the “interweb.” Usually these events are taking place in or around larger metropolitan areas. That probably doesn’t shock you. The further society moves from rural living, the less understanding they become to those lifestyles. I’ll also say that they are often easy prey for the propagandist animal rights groups to infiltrate with messages portraying traditional outdoor activities in a poor light, leading to a negative view towards those activities.

In our area, it is often the case where grandparents were farmers, parents moved to the city for jobs, grandparents retired and moved to town, and grandchildren live in the cities or suburbs. When families get together they talk about school, sports, life events and such.

The grandchildren don’t make it to the woodlot to see a deer that starved in the winter or fell prey to predators. They don’t hear the stories about the circle of life on a farm, in a forest, or on a prairie. The antis have added aquatic water systems now. Below the surface, big fish

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eat little fish at alarming rates. It goes on unseen. If it is so bad to catch a bluegill and put it in a cooler to take home to eat, why isn’t it equally bad for a musky to catch, puncture with its teeth, then scale, and finally swallow the bluegill’s brother while it’s still alive?

Both are part of nature. Both complete the circle life. Both need to occur for the predator to go on living.

Commercial fishing goes on extensively around large urban coastal areas. Large fish markets offer sea fare we may never see here. All caught off the shoreline and brought into the market by the fishermen. Yet they don’t seem to draw the anti’s hostilities.

This breaks into two categories. The animal rights category and the property rights category. In the property rights case, these events focus around lakes surrounded by private property and homes. Some do not have public access, but in most states, the water remains public domain from some watermark level.

If the fishermen obtains permission for access from one landowner they have every right to fish there. But not all lake lot owners feel that way. Several venture out onto ice to berate ice fishers, saying that they can’t fish there because they are not with someone who owns a lake lot, which is not true.

Others go nuts when someone fishes off of their dock when not in use. Here’s the deal: if a family is having an outing, fishing from, or just enjoying their lake view from their dock, I feel most fishers will provide them with space and privacy and move around them to a non-busy dock. It’s common courtesy.

But, when not in use, the dock itself protrudes out into public water. What’s more, on some lakes with all the shoreline trees and shrub structure removed and replaced with lawn to the waterline, docks are the only shoreline structure. I maintain that the lot owner has a basic responsibility to provide something for some fish structure in order to obtain their million dollar view.

Current codes don’t allow clearing the complete shoreline of the lake lot, but most of us have been to several lakes where that happened a long time ago and it remains so today. Additionally, many of those dwellings have a septic tank draining into the lake that is causing algae blooms.

There needs to be a happy medium struck here. Common courtesy from all and respect of privacy of others should just lead people into the common sense solutions, but that doesn’t seem to be as common as it once was.

The other side of this is individuals worried about the poor, suffering fish. I notice they don’t have that problem as much when they are at Red Lobster.

Either way, this all should be a bit of concern to the level of awareness that those who oppose our way of life have advanced the ball. Something to think about for the upcoming years.

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LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN