How Did the LAX Hearings Go?

How was the turnout? What were your thoughts about how the meeting went?

I would say close to 50 or so anglers showed up. I was impressed to see the support that the Bass guys showed during the hearing. I wish I could say the same for us Walleye guys. There were three of us that I could tell (including my father and myself). That’s not good.

The comments were all against at least some part of the regulations. There were some well thought out and prepared comments. A local small business owner went up and left his heart out on the table. He had probably the best speach of the night. He explained what one Stren series tournament did to help save his business.

I have posted on some of the other Walleye sites about my dissapointment over the lack of representation. Hopefully the Bass side will be strong enough to help make up for it.

There were also several representatives from area groups who hold ice fishing tournaments. They explained several times how this would basically kill any profits that these ice derbys have. If they charge $1 per entrant and have over 100 entrants they would have to pay $225 I think. The simple economics of this shows that these events simply could not be held.

Scott’s speech was very good and very emotional. The proposed regulations specifically state that there will be “NO ECONOMIC IMPACT” in part to these new regulations. He basically came up and called B.S. and explained how tournament fishing alone has saved his business….

I thought one of the other better speeches on the night was the guy from LOWE boats. He presented his case AGAINST the proposal very well.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see all the support from the Ice fisherman around the area. For those of you who didn’t know, if these rules go through, you might as well forget about ice fishing derbies b/c nobody will be able to afford to put them on.

It was nice to see Dan Kapanke there as well. It’s nice to see him taking an active interest and listening in on hearings such as this.

There was only one negative that I saw from the meeting. – that is the mis-perception and lack of knowledge people are basing their opinions on.

Numbers don’t lie. The FACT of the matter is that the delayed mortality numbers were 10-18%, NOT 85% like the one gentleman spoke about. He was also mistaken about displacing fish during the spawn. Even after Patrick S (WI-DNR) advised that as of now there are NO KNOWN FACTS that fishing during the spawning season has any ILL effects towards the fishery, it still didn’t phase him.

Overall I was pleased, let’s hope the rest of the meetings go over as well as it did here.

Keep fighting the fight!!

For those of you that did not testify you still can. Here is a response from Patrick as to what needs to be included in an email to him for it to count as testimoney

If the message is sent to me by November 17 it will be included with the
rest of the public comments. Nothing special needs to be included. I
recommend pointing out specific components of the rule that you have
issues with and provide alternatives.

Thanks guys! I really hope more anglers realize this will affect them more than they know and need to help to win this…

Don’t let up we need that at every meeting.

If the DNR is giving equal wieght to every email and personal testimony they recieve we had better get on the email. Imagine every Suzy homemaker in her lake front cottage pumping out emails while the kids are at school.

Send those emails.

After last thursday’s testimony Patrick mentioned that they may be more inclined to take Economic impact of small biusnesses into account. Any business that makes less than $5,000.000.00 a year would count. Try and get anybody that you know that falls into that catagory to email their concerns to him.