Right or Privilege?

My mother and father began taking me fishing shortly after I learned to walk. My hunting career began well before I could shoot. My dad coming in from a hunt with me asleep on his shoulder and a played-out beagle pup in his game bag is one of my mother's favorite stories. Getting started in the 50's and remaining avid all these years means you've been around enough to see lots of changes.

Part of what changes is us; our interests change and we look at things differently as we mature. Other changes are brought by the number of people looking to participate in these grand pastimes, resources and habitats shrink, and of course there are regulatory changes that shape and define how we as recreational fishermen and hunters can be accommodated.

Lately, we have been receiving lots of news and comment regarding the proposals made by saltwater fisheries managers, mostly their effort to write new seatrout regulations for the Lower Laguna Madre. The Lower Laguna, fragile eco-system that it is, would appear to be reeling from the effect of too much reeling literally and figuratively.

Gill net surveys down there point to a marked decline in relative abundance of spotted seatrout that are longer than the 15" minimum keep size. The decline can be traced back nearly two decades. You could say that despite no freezes in seventeen years, the Lower Laguna has never recovered from the devastation wreaked by the last big one in '89. Elsewhere along the coast, numbers have rebounded, even with the considerable rise in angling pressure. With no commercial harvest allowed, it shouldn't be too hard to conclude that the problem in the Lower Laguna is recreational overharvest.

Last week, the TPWD commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the first set of region-specific regulations for seatrout in the Lower Laguna. The new bag limit will be half the old one 5 fish per day. The possession limit is also revised to one day's bag limit; the old regs allowed two daily limits in possession. The new regs will take effect with our new license on September 01 this year. Barring any natural disaster, it is expected that signs of recovery will be measurable in three years. The boundaries will be from Marker 21 in the Land Cut to Boca Chica. The current 10 fish limit will remain unchanged in all other Texas waters.

Now it doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out that this change is not pleasing all the people, not yet anyway. While public comment submitted to the commissioners favored the change better than 2 to 1, there are still some users in a tizzy.

In the feedback and comment I've been witness to, pretty near everybody on the pro side of the ledger cited concern for the future of the resource. Recurring themes included leaving the resource in better shape than we found it, and how even though we like to eat some of what we catch, nobody actually needed to fish for food these days.

Those opposed cited distrust of the data and disappointment that TPWD would bow to elitist anglers in the creation of a trophy fishery. Many said TPWD should restore the pass at East Cut before cutting the limit. Almost all of them thought a reduced bag limit was a violation of their right to fish.

I think they are confused. I don't believe the data is junk, this not about creating a trophy fishery, and the decline began a long time ago, back when the East Cut was running full tilt.

When I think of rights I think of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Independence says we are, "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." Webster defines a right as "given by nature or law." I say being allowed to keep fish for dinner is a privilege we earn through stewardship; changing the bag limit for trout violates none of my rights. It's just another of the many changes we see during our career and I think it will prove beneficial for users and the resource itself in the long run.