A tale of two...

...fish managers.  Well, four...but, the other two have my respect.  Scott Stewart asked me to help him electroshock Black Earth creek for an FFF demonstration.  And, on the horseshoe no less...my favorite piece of water on the entire stream.  Brown trout rolled out of undercuts in numbers that were hard to believe.  Jordan Weeks came out to my property to look it over and talk even though my property is not in his area.  He commented this part of the valley hasn't changed in hundreds of years because of the limited agriculture and could probably once again hold 18 inch brook trout.  We discussed a brook trout sanctuary for the headwaters and he thought it do-able.  If my local fish manager had any interest in this part of the driftless...

You see, he is a few counties over and has his hands full just dealing with those waters...my stream flows into the kickapoo river with the county line just a mile down the road.  The lower half is one fish managers area and the upper anothers...and we get little love.  In fact we got caught up in a war of fish managers of the worst kind...selfish, vindictive, and catering to opposing interest groups.  So, my property sits with nothing...even though the other manager in charge of a large piece of the kickapoo watershed and the lower half of my stream, has offered to take over my headwaters section.  A practice already used between these two on another watershed in my county.  He's also straddled a fence to upgrade regulations to limit brown trout overpopulating brook trout waters like happened in my valley.  A manager with a pulse on the times...

Now, these other two...I also electroshocked my valley with both of them.  We took almost 100 brook trout out for replanting a feeder downstream...then onto another nearby valley where we took 70 larger spawning brooks that went behind a locked gate on a wealthy landowners property three counties away.  My phone calls to this fish manager go to voicemail with no replies...even though I sold my easement and have willow and beaver problems.  His answer is to call the feds who come out and dynamite the beaver dam after trapping them for two weeks.  There has to be an expense here and it does nothing to solve the problem...the kickapoo river has an endless supply of beavers.  Its the willows, stupid...

The other fish manager has taken it on himself to to go all civil disobedience and I wont give him the benefit of my long history of obeying only good laws...also, the vitriol to those other professionals and anyone else with another opinion.  Mostly, flyfishermen...and, catch and release.  Now, we all know catch and release is a management tool, not a religion...but, the same can be said for catch and kill and its extremes.  A brook trout sanctuary would require a no limit on browns...This is all obvious stuff for fish managers.  Or, it should be...I sat on an advisory committee to change Wisconsins regs with both these fish managers and heard little from them in disagreement to our proposals for a system of regulations tailored for individual streams according to their capabilities for fishing opportunities.  We're all for fishing opportunities, right...but, not when its bad for the fish.  This has gone too far and reasonable anglers and professionals in the driftless realize that there is overcrowding and stunting of trout but the answer isn't blanket rules in the name of simplicity.  The class system of regs was meant to be simple...and, it is.

To ones credit...he's retired.  Its just too bad to throw away a lifetimes work in the field to make a little tiny point.  The other could make a larger point by also retiring.  Something, that should have happened before the restraining orders and threats and public pulling down of pants...

 Well...in payment for the rant, here is some shots from the Little Hole National Trail and the Green river...

And, another nearby small mountain stream...