Alaska’s got it Figured Out

According to the Chinese calendar, 2006 is the year of the dog. Pam and I decided last summer that it would be the year of the Alaskan vacation. Business, family, and a host of other matters have limited our ability to travel for way too long but this year was going to be different.

On a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, August 27, our flight touched down in Anchorage and we could not wait to get down to Soldotna. We had an action-packed seven days of fishing planned. We were there to chase everything from halibut and coho in the North Pacific to rainbows, dollies, and grayling in remote mountain lakes. And if we survived all that, we'd take in a glacier cruise and some whale watching.

The eco-systems we visited were incredibly rich and diverse and the fishing was nothing short of awesome. Alaska bills itself as "The Great Land" and no matter how you interpret it; Alaska is truly a great place. In many ways, Alaska is a lot like Texas. Mind you we mingled almost exclusively with people connected to the fishing, but I came readily to admire their rugged individualism, strong sense of state pride, and the way they care for the land. Relatively few were born there, but I understood that, I was not born in Texas.

Now amid all the similarities between Alaska and Texas, I did note a remarkable difference; the average Alaskan seemed reasonably satisfied with the job their game and fish managers are doing.

My guess is that when you live in a climate as severe as coastal Alaska, you develop an extra-sensory consciousness of the environment. You cannot help but notice the entire balance of nature sagging under the weight of man. It's almost as if the general population embraces rather than challenges the regulations Fish and Game have designed for conservation of resources.

Everybody hunts and fishes in Alaska. And if the resident users are not taxing the resources sufficiently, hordes of lower-forty-eighters are on their way up looking for a non-resident piece of the pie.

So, how do they keep their rivers, streams and lakes full of fish? Well to begin, every body of water we fished had its own regulations. Some places were catch and release only, others were one fish of a given species per day, sometimes we were allowed only a single barbless hook, and there were places where the limits seemed very generous.

I cannot tell you how many times I've heard people say regional fisheries management will not work here in Texas. "It'll be an enforcement nightmare - nobody will follow the rules all you'll end up doing is starting a big fight." Yeah, we've certainly heard all of those.

Now I'm not for a fleeting second suggesting Texas should adopt a 64-page fishing regulation digest like the one the nice lady that sold me the non-resident license handed across the counter, thank God my guides told me everything I needed to know. But don't you think the average guy can learn that limits in one bay might be different from those in another? And don't you think the average guy will abide by new fishing regs the same as he abides by changes in waterfowl, deer and dove laws?

I read a news column the other day that said if you are under the age of fifty, the population of Texas will nearly double within your lifetime. TPWD says saltwater fishing in Texas is growing at the rate of 2,000 new anglers per month and that we'll soon have over one million. Call me gun-shy, but this looks like the tip of an iceberg to me. Unless we can steer around it and learn new ways to look at fisheries management, the fisheries we're going to hand over to our kids and grandkids won't amount to much. There is much to be learned in Alaska; I think they've got it figured out!