looks like the story has made its way to the star tribune.
Fishing prostitutes
Dennis Anderson: ‘Fishing prostitutes’? Only in the Weird World of Mille Lacs
Comments, which he later rephrased, by the owner of a boat launch set off a firestorm across the country about public access to fishing waters.
By Dennis Anderson, Star Tribune
Last update: July 26, 2007 – 9:58 PM
Each time I’ve dropped a boat into Mille Lacs this summer, I’ve done so at a Department of Natural Resources public access. Does that make me a “fishing prostitute” — a semantically challenged term meant to imply I came and I fished but spent no money in the area?
Terry Thurmer, 53, who’s in the fishing business, thinks so. Or else he doesn’t –now that he’s been quoted in the Mille Lacs Messenger newspaper joining two of humankind’s most enduring interests.
“It was a poor choice of words when I said ‘prostitutes,”‘ Thurmer said Thursday. “I should have said ‘meat hunters.”‘
Welcome to the Weird World of Mille Lacs, where, even in a summer like this, in which walleyes have been fairly jumping into anglers’ boats, and where smallmouth bass and muskie fishing arguably is unequaled in North America, controversy has arisen once again like a serpent, its tentacles entangling anglers near and far.
Spawning ground for this most recent controversy was a DNR-sponsored Mille Lacs public input meeting July 11. The gathering followed a DNR rule change that dramatically limited the size of Mille Lacs walleyes that anglers can keep the remainder of the year.
Before July 9, four walleyes from the lake were allowed under 20 inches, one of which could be more than 28 inches. But because the bite has been so hot, the DNR on July 9 restricted the allowable Mille Lacs walleye “slot” to four fish between 14 and 16 inches, including one over 28 inches.
The problem for anglers — and for businesses that serve them — is that there aren’t many walleyes in Mille Lacs this summer between 14 and 16 inches.
Exactly, said the DNR. That’s why the change was made. Otherwise, anglers would exceed the Mille Lacs walleye quota the DNR negotiated with a group of Ojibwe bands under a federal court agreement.
All of which prefaces the “fishing prostitute” comment made by Thurmer at the July 11 meeting. The owner of Terry’s Boat Harbor on Mille Lacs, Thurmer offers a place for anglers to launch their boats ($10 gets you in and out) or join others, for a fee, on large craft he owns for guided fishing trips onto the big lake.
Thurmer, in retrospect, wishes he had more specifically castigated only those who fish a lake, any lake, day after day, when the bite is hot, taking limit after limit but offering little in return.
“I wasn’t referring to 99 percent of fishermen,” he said. “Just the minority.”
Still, after Thurmer’s comments were reported, a fishing firestorm erupted across the state — and nation — as untold hundreds of anglers, mostly in online chat rooms, told Thurmer where he could stick it.
My jerking knee suggests I should pile on. Favoring the DNR public boat accesses as I have this summer, perhaps I’ve been a happy hooker in more ways than one.
But it’s also true that, around the lake, from Wealthwood to Malmo to Isle and Garrison, I’ve dropped a fair bit of change this season for bait, food, gas and supplies.
Yet, even if I hadn’t, I’m preternaturally averse to joining what seems to be a peculiarly American interest in ruining people who speak intemperately — or, occasionally, outright stupidly. Yes, Thurmer at times might tell you a little more than you want to know. And, like many people, he’s capable of viewing the world through a prism very decidedly of his own making.
But that doesn’t make him a bad guy. Or even that unusual.
Moreover, when Thurmer said what he said — even if what he said represents only a small part of what he more fully believes — he gave voice to a nearly universal tension that exists between locals and tourists.
In Ely, for example, some canoe outfitters decry no end to Twin Cities paddlers who bring their own gear and pass through town en route to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, only to leave a week later without changing “a $5 bill or their underwear,” as some in town like to say.
That said, Mille Lacs locals who in recent months have formed a sort of groundswell in opposing further public boat accesses to Mille Lacs are playing with fire, and would do well to recall the life and times of the late DNR Commissioner Joe Alexander.
Growing up poor in Kentucky, with few lakes and rivers open to him and his dad to fish, Alexander vowed at a young age to make public access to public waters a lifetime goal. And he succeeded, defeating all opponents, as Christmas Lake shoreline residents in the western suburbs can attest.
What Alexander knew is what all in the fishing game should know, be they business owners, ethical anglers, fishing prostitutes or meat hunters:
More access means more anglers and more boaters, a critical mass of which is necessary to ensure that clean water and the fish they support are part of the landscape forever.
) And how many fish will that launch “Rape” out of the lake? I say outlaw the launches! 
