Civil Disobedience

http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/former-dnr-biologist-draws-citation-in-act-of-civil-disobedience/article_d9143cb2-ac39-5a1b-9763-86c99a64462c.html

Sounds interesting, but we have to pay to read the article Len.

Best of the weekend: Former DNR biologist draws citation in act of ‘civil disobedience’

Roger Kerr of Boscobel, Wis., fishes Friday for trout in a coldwater stream in Vernon County. The former fisheries biologist was cited for taking trout caught during April�s catch-and-release season as part of a protest against what he considers onerous regulations.

5 hours ago • By Chris Hubbuch(30) Comments
“We have to walk a fine line between science and what the public desires. If we do stuff that’s going to destroy our fishery, that’s a fail.”

Jordan Weeks, manager of 1,500 miles of streams

“For a trout guy, there’s no better place in the world than right here. This is one of the best trout stream complexes in America. And who’s fishing it? Nobody.”

Roger Kerr, former DNR biologist

COON VALLEY – Roger Kerr wasn’t surprised when the warden showed up at his Boscobel home in May. After all, he had sent an invitation.

The 75-year-old angler and retired biologist even provided a written statement describing how he’d gone fishing with night crawlers in early April, taking three trout home with him.

All of which is illegal during the early catch-and-release season.

Kerr, who spent some four decades with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, was well aware.

But the former fisheries manager thinks overregulation is to blame for a decline in fishing on some of the nation’s premier trout streams, and after 12 years of arguing with the agency, he decided to take his case to court in hopes jurors will be sympathetic to his cause.

“I’d been trying to get a court case over trout rules for years,” he said.

In a letter to the editor published in the Boscobel Dial, Kerr announced his plans to harvest trout from Richland Creek and invited warden Cody Adams to ticket him.

“Please give me a citation for harvesting trout illegally from Richland Creek,” he wrote. “I mainly drive a white Ford pickup truck with a topper, so if you see my truck along Hwy. 60 please come and check me and give me a ticket for keeping trout when the harvest season is closed. I want to challenge this rule in court.”

Kerr went on to note it was his fourth attempt to get a citation.

He fished the Crawford County stream during the winter catch-and-release season, when only artificial lures are allowed. He also took eight trout — three more than the limit — from two Grant County streams on opening day.

For these violations he was issued two citations. Both are noncriminal violations with potential fines up to $4,305 and loss of fishing privileges for up to a year.

Too many trout
Over the past 40 years, the loss of farms and introduction of conservation practices, combined with aggressive resource management, vastly improved the condition of southwest Wisconsin’s trout habitat.

Biologists — including Kerr — began stocking streams with wild fish, which established self-sustaining populations at the same time as anglers were embracing catch-and-release practices.

As a result, trout populations boomed, and many local streams are now overpopulated, which results in smaller fish.

Kerr blames the overpopulation on complex regulations — reduced bag limits, restrictions on lures, and the winter catch-and-release season — which he says drove away the bait anglers who eat their catch.

“The DNR made it so tough for those types of anglers that tens of thousands of them said to hell with it,” he said.

DNR officials say they cannot talk about Kerr while his case is pending.

But Jordan Weeks, who manages the 1,500 miles of classified trout streams in La Crosse, Monroe, Vernon and Crawford counties, said he’s long heard gripes about overly complex rules.

While conceding that regulations could be simplified, Weeks dismisses the notion that they’re scaring off anglers.

“If you can drive a car, you should be able to figure out what the regulation is,” Weeks said. “If you can’t, you probably shouldn’t be out there.”

Still, there’s little to worry about – as long as you use artificial lures and throw back your catch.

“The regulations aren’t kind to bait fishermen,” said Jay Thurston, a Viroqua-based angler and author of several trout fishing books.

Either way, it’s not clear whether regulations are to blame for the trout proliferation.

“By the late ’80s or early ’90s, artificial or fly fishing was the bait of choice,” said Dave Vetrano, a DNR fisheries biologist who retired in 2010. “The regulations hadn’t changed. The clientele base had changed.”

Weeks, who is 38 and grew up watching sport fishing shows like Bassmasters, said those in his generation and younger grew up with a catch-and-release mentality.

“The ethics have changed,” he said. “Not just with trout — with almost every other species we manage, except pan fish.”

Vetrano said he would love to see people take and eat more trout, but changing the regulations won’t help.

He points to a 2008 survey of anglers on two stretches of Timber Coulee, one restricted to artificial lures and catch-and-release, the other with a five-fish limit: There was almost no difference in the number of fish taken.

“The bag limits really don’t mean anything,” he said. “The clientele we have don’t keep fish.”

‘A kind of religion’
Even 12 years after his retirement, Kerr is well known to those in the DNR and Trout Unlimited, a national conservation organization with nearly 150,000 members dedicated to preserving the nation’s coldwater fisheries.

“When I left I had a one-inch thick file of Roger Kerr letters,” Vetrano said. “I understand his concerns, but his approach is a little simplistic.”

“Everybody in the state is familiar with him,” said Rick Kyte, a past president of the local Trout Unlimited chapter. “He was kind of a thorn in my side when I was president.”

Kerr and other bait anglers argue fly fishing elitists have taken over Trout Unlimited, thumbing their noses at catch-and-eat bait fishermen and highjacking the DNR regulatory process.

“They worship trout,” he said. “And they don’t want people to eat trout.”

Thurston won’t argue with the first part of that statement.

Now 81, the retired school principal caught his first trout at age 9 and has been hooked ever since. Despite fishing twice a week, he hasn’t kept a trout since 1982.

“They’re just too valuable to be caught only once,” he said. “It gets to the point that it’s like a religion. You just thoroughly enjoy watching them swim.”

He agrees eating trout is good for people and the fish population, but don’t expect him to bring any home.

“At this point I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m so into releasing them and giving a gift to another angler.”

Jim Cox, president of the Coulee Region chapter of Trout Unlimited, said the organization’s goal is simply to preserve habitat and making streams accessible.

“He thinks that Trout Unlimited is taking control of the trout,” Cox said. “That was never our purpose … it’s mainly just to keep the habitat going.”

Thurston, a charter member of Trout Unlimited, said while the DNR does pay attention to TU, it’s only natural given the group’s status as the nation’s largest trout conservation organization.

And those who fish most often are the ones most likely to show up in force when the DNR makes new rules.

Underlying Kerr’s argument is a sense that the region has become a playground for urban professionals who descend on the streams each weekend often with thousands of dollars of fly fishing gear. Meanwhile locals are afraid of getting fined if they drop a worm in the wrong creek.

Dan Flaherty is an avid trout angler, fishing usually twice a week – and always with bait.

His father, of the same name, was one of the founding members of the local Trout Unlimited chapter. He is credited with introducing Wisconsin’s trout stamp, which generates extra revenue for trout habitat restoration.

But Flaherty said his father, who died last year, became disenchanted with the group as he got older.

“At some point it became primarily fly fishermen and they snubbed their nose at bait fishermen,” he said.

That’s a common sentiment among bait anglers, but one that doesn’t sit well with Trout Unlimited members.

“There’s no signs out there stating you have to fish all the streams with a fly,” Cox said. “I’m happy to see anybody out there fishing.”

Thurston agrees the current regulations favor the catch-and-release crowd, but he doesn’t mind.

“I don’t mind having them come because it’s a boost to the economy,” he said. “I can still go out during the week and have a stream to myself … We have plenty of water for everybody.”

A delicate balance
As a fisheries manager, Weeks is tasked with crafting regulations that protect the resource while maximizing opportunity to fish. For some that means an opportunity to take fish to eat, for others it’s catching 30 fish and letting them go, while still others want to land a 20-inch trophy.

“The common misconception is we pander to certain groups,” Weeks said. “I try to get everyone a piece of the pie … No one group gets everything they want.”

Weeks said he must strike a delicate balance with a goal of pleasing divergent interests. And the state is not a uniform ecosystem: what works in the densely populated southwestern streams might not fly up north.

“We have to walk a fine line between science and what the public desires,” Weeks said. “If we do stuff that’s going to destroy our fishery, that’s a fail.”

Weeks acknowledges that many of the streams in southwest Wisconsin are overpopulated, and he’s hoping that limited changes in coming years will provide evidence to evaluate the impact of regulations.

Kyte said TU is not opposed to change but doesn’t want regulations guided by popular opinion.

“We’re all in favor of simplifying the regulations,” he said. “We have to let this be guided by science. Do some measuring, some analysis and see what the results are.”

Too busy to fish
Kerr says his protest is not about him but the “thousands of fishermen in southwest Wisconsin” who gave up the sport.

On a branch of the Timber Coulee Creek on Friday morning, Kerr had the stream nearly to himself.

“For a trout guy, there’s no better place in the world than right here,” Kerr said. “This is one of the best trout stream complexes in America. And who’s fishing it? Nobody.”

Kerr notes that between 1984 and 2008, the share of local anglers fishing southwest Wisconsin streams dropped from 90 percent to 15. But the overall number dropped 61 percent in that same time frame.

People simply don’t fish as much as they used to.

Those in Trout Unlimited and the DNR say the decline in participation has little to do with regulation. Fish simply can’t compete with video games, computers, smart phones and team sports.

In fact, a 2011 survey of lapsed anglers found the No. 1 reason was time constraints, followed by age and health concerns. Only 12 percent cited regulations as a leading factor.

“It’s hard to get kids out fishing,” Vetrano said. “We’re seeing a difficulty in all of the (outdoor) sports – hunting and fishing.”

Even Kerr knows this. He’s seen it with his own grandchildren.

“I had them out fishing when they were 10, 12,” he said. “Then they got into sports. That was the end of fishing.”

Civil disobedience
Kerr has proposed returning to a seven-month trout season, allowing bait fishing and harvesting of trout in March and April, at least in the western corner of the state where trout are abundant; increasing bag limits; and doing away with patchwork regulations, which vary from creek to creek, or even on a single creek.

The DNR is moving toward changing regulations.

Among proposed rule changes for 2016 are a 10-fish limit with no size restriction on four creeks and a unified system of labeling – green, yellow and red – to indicate the level of restrictions on a stream.

But Kerr was upset that the plan did not provide for bait fishing and harvest during the early season.

“That’s what really made me angry,” he said. “That stimulated me to engage in civil disobedience.”

Kerr, who was cited for violations in both Crawford and Grant counties, is hoping for a jury nullification – in which jurors follow their conscience rather than the letter of the law – when his cases come up later this summer.

“If they follow the letter of the law, he’s going to be found guilty,” said his attorney, Lynn Rider. “We don’t have a lot to argue.”

Rider admits it’s a long shot.

“There aren’t many people willing to spend thousands of dollars to fight a legal battle you’re going to lose,” she said. “All for a ticket.”

“For a trout guy, there’s no better place in the world than right here. This is one of the best trout stream complexes in America. And who’s fishing it? Nobody.” Roger Kerr, former DNR biologist

I love these complaints about “overly complex regulations”. So fishing with artificial lures and throwing back what you catch is too complex? Seems simple to me.

Sounds to me like just another guy who thinks he should be able to do whatever he wants and he’s inventing reasons for why that makes sense.

Ho-hum. We’ve seen it all before. Hunting used to have those guys too, back when waterfowl regs went to regs on individual species, hens vs drakes regs, etc, we had the same squawking and “civil disobedience” aka poaching back then along with the same invented logic about how this was ruining hunting and would drive people out of the sport because they couldn’t fill the freezer every trip out.

Just like trout fishing, all that doom and gloom never came to pass.

Grouse

Grouse,

The point trying to be made is that most trout streams now have more trout than they have ever had, but due to a mountain of regulation they have have changed the biomass of fish from trout of all sizes in a stream to streams dominated by a ton of stunted small trout. Before everything turned to C&R artificial only you caught a wider variety of trout sizes. Now they get fish counts of over 3000 fish per mile but they are 7 inchers or less. The regs also favor one type of fishing almost to exclusion. Many trout anglers quit in mass as they only wanted to fish with bait as that is how they prefer to fish. I don’t fish trout as much as I used to but I really noticed the change on the rivers with the change in the size of the fish when the c&R went into place. I use all methods of catching if its muddy worms and spinners, Gin clear fly gear. Whatever conditions dictate.I am in favor less restrictive regulations as well. I keep a couple every now and then, more probably need to be kept to allow some to grow to bigger size.

Mwal

There’s really too many sweeping generalizations out there to address.

I’m not sure what is meant by “the regs also favor one type of fishing almost to exclusion”. I don’t see any “type” of fishing mentioned in the MN or WI regs at all. I see partial and timeboxed limits on the use of live bait. So what “type” of fishing is being favored? I fish with both spinning gear and fly gear in both the C&R and regular seasons in both states. Which “type” of fishing am I not doing because it’s being excluded by regulation? Again, this strikes me as complaining not because of over-regulation but because some think it’s their right to do whatever they want without any regulation.

Since trout are not native, we really have no scientific idea for what the size and carrying capacity of rivers in the Midwest should be under our Midwest conditions. So when people say there are “too many” trout and that they are “stunted”, what data are they using to arrive at those conclusions?

Having fished trout on 3 continents, I can tell you that picture a lot of guys seem to want here in MN/WI, with rivers full of fish and with large average to boot exist almost no place in the world naturally.

The fact that there are more trout in the Midwest than there ever have been is mainly due to habitat improvement and water quality improvements combined with temperature control. Complaints about there being “too many trout” are off base because first there needs to be trout full stop. You don’t go from few (if any) trout to a stream full of 18+ inchers overnight.

It is obvious to me that slot sizes DO work, but people expect instant overnight changes. The fish on the two rivers I fish the most are bigger than they have ever been, but this change has been gradual and first and foremost there needs to be trout to begin with.

Lastly, guys should be careful what they wish for. If you think you want rivers that are full of big fish, then I’d say go to the places that have these conditions and try your luck.

From my real world experience, I can tell you that it’s totally different and many guys would find themselves pining for the good old days when they could catch more than 1-3 fish on a good day. Even if those fish were a lot smaller.

Grouse

The MN DNR seemed to feel that the trout regs were too complicated; they just simplified them not long ago. The part of it that always bothered me was when they broke a stream into sections and had different rules on each section. I’m paranoid about walking past a boundary and not seeing the sign or knowing exactly where I was.

I wonder how the size structure of the trout in MN streams compares to other states. Don’t we have our share of big ones too?

Rootski

I’m all for simple regulations, but lets call things what they really are. People who are complaining that regulations are “too complicated” are using that as an excuse to forward their real agenda: Elimination of C&R regs, slot limits, and restrictions on using live bait. In other words, the only level of acceptable regulation to them is to say go ahead and play by your own rules.

Wisconsin’s rules were already much simpler than MN’s and in the early C&R only season they were about as simple as any regulated fishing season can get: Fish on any trout stream, use no live bait, release everything caught.

If that’s too complicated for someone, they shouldn’t be out there in the first place.

I can only speak to my experience with streams that change classification, but in MN and WI I’ve found that this change has always been referenced by a fixed and readily identifiable landmark like a bridge, a confluence with another stream, a state park boundary, canoe access point, etc.

Grouse

I like to take younger kids fishing to introduce them to the sport. It’s much easier to teach them to fish with worms.

When trout unlimited goes in and banks streams in a cow pasture that was previously a good place to take youth because all the brush is knocked down, then the following year it is made catch and release only for the elite fly fishermen, it simply seems wrong….

I am quite sympathetic to the points being made in the article.

“I can only speak to my experience with streams that change classification, but in MN and WI I’ve found that this change has always been referenced by a fixed and readily identifiable landmark like a bridge, a confluence with another stream, a state park boundary, canoe access point, etc. ”

Good to know, thanks!