Thursday, October 18, 2001

Major changes on the horizon for trout rules

Want to respond faster? Send comments to Robin Riechers, TPW, 4200 Smith School Road, Austin, Texas 78744 or through the public comment section of the TPW Website, http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us.

It didn't take long for Texas Parks and Wildlife to respond to the Coastal Bend Guides Association and other groups regarding suggested changes to trout regulations.
   Department officials want to hear what we think now. I expect a spirited debate will follow.
   This week, Hal Osburn, TPW director of Coastal Fisheries, publicly laid the groundwork for what could become the most sweeping changes to Texas saltwater fishing rules since gillnetting was outlawed and wild redfish and trout were banned from fish markets in the 1980s.
   The Coastal Conservation Association (then GCCA) was behind the historic changes and has had a hand in current proposals, along with the Saltwater-fisheries Enhancement Association. Osburn said that encouragement from angler groups and guides inspired him to introduce these issues now rather than later. Public support for change tends to help the medicine go down.
   But it was a group of about 120 local fishing guides, with support from smaller guides associations up and down the Texas coast, who submitted the latest formal proposals to TPW. Osburn took the guides' proposals, combined them with other suggestions and with information gleaned from angler surveys and biological statistics to arrive at the state's tentative plan.
   Public meetings on this (at least one will be in the Coastal Bend) will be scheduled throughout the state within the next two months, Osburn said.
   Up front, I should say that Osburn has not gone so far as to suggest we outlaw the use of croaker as bait.
   But he is toying with the idea of upping the minimum legal length of spotted sea trout to 16 inches and lowering the current 10-fish bag limit. Also on the table is a variation of the guides' proposal to restrict the take of trophy trout to one per angler per day (no specific size yet) and to restrict the allowable take on guided trips to paying customers only, or to one trout per day for the guides.
   All of these could be tweaked and probably will be.
   Rounding out the CBGA's suggestions is a state rule that would require fishing guides to show proof they are certified by the U.S. Coast Guard (possess a for-hire six-pack license) before a state license would be issued. The thinking here is that certain guides bypass federal certification, thus crowding the profession and our waters, not to mention the safety concerns.
   Though Osburn steadfastly adheres to the state's posture that trout populations are better than ever, he does seem to agree that the overall trout-fishing experience in Texas could be improved.
   The proposed measures address a resource distribution issue, not the traditional biological one. In other words, these rules would represent a shift from managing trout stocks to maintain a viable spawning population (quantity only) to managing trout as a recreational and sustainable resource.
   Many anglers have viewed TPW's data on trout stocks with skepticism. It's difficult to understand how TPW officials could repeatedly refute or at least downplay the overwhelming anecdotal evidence that points to a decline in trout fishing success.
   The department's data did seem to contradict the real-world experiences of anglers.
   Many viewed this stance as a state agency protecting itself, a perception, right or wrong, which diminishes credibility. Maybe this latest measure will help reverse this trend.
   Osburn continues to insist that 20 years of state management has resulted in a never-better trout fishery. He also said trout spawning stocks are at an all-time high and that the average trout caught has doubled in size during the past two decades from one pound to two pounds.
   He has data that supports these claims.
   At the same time, Osburn believes that adopting these proposed measures would help enhance our fishing experience by more equitably distributing trout to more anglers.
   "Managing trout populations to increase the opportunity to land a trophy trout would be a refinement of an already great sport fishery that could produce even more social and economic benefits for Texas," Osburn said in a news release. He goes on to say that it will be a challenge to create an overall plan to accommodate the diverse angler-harvest preferences, in light of differences in trout populations and fishing pressure from bay to bay.
   Coastal fisheries management has been addressed with statewide rules for decades, despite differences in pressure and fish populations in different bays. There was a time when county authority set fishing rules.
   I suppose this means that just because anglers in the Coastal Bend want changes to promote conservation doesn't necessarily mean anglers at Sabine Lake or Galveston Bay want or need the same rules. This raises an interesting question.
   Should culture and/or fish stocks in a specific region determine saltwater fishery rules in that region, as is done sometimes with freshwater fisheries?
   Osburn said this would be difficult but doable.
  
  
  

Talk about fishing in the Coastal Bend