HOW WAS YOUR April Fools’ Day? Mine was the best ever. Like other holidays, April Fools’ Day requires extensive preparations.
To get ready for Christmas, we chop down a tree. To get ready for Easter, we boil, color and hide eggs.
April Fools’ Day can be more hassle than all those other holidays put together, if you fish. Because that’s when the state has us buy our new fishing licenses.
You probably thought the state of Washington was run by a power-mad cabal of self-serving, pencil-pushing, pocket-lining functionaries whose only purpose is to make our lives miserable.
You didn’t know that the government also has a keen sense of humor, irony and revenge, but they do. Why else would they insist that we get our new fishing license and catch record cards on April Fools’ Day and then not print the new fishing laws until July?
The real fun starts when you discover your fishing license, hunting license, catch record cards and game tags are printed with disappearing ink.
Let’s say you catch a fish and somewhere in the 148 pages of Washington state fishing laws you and your team of attorneys determine you can legally retain the fish and eat it. You must immediately fill out the appropriate catch record card in ink.
This can be a challenge since either moisture or sunshine can erase the ink from these documents, leaving you with blank pieces of paper and no clue as to which one is appropriate for the species of critter you caught or shot.
Still, you must fill out one of the papers or risk getting a ticket for failure to record your catch. That’s another April Fools’ chuckle.
Chances are, the ink from your pen won’t stick to the paper. You end up with an ink blot that resembles a Rorschach test on the wrong blank paper. That could get you a ticket. It’s all part of the Fish Cop Employment Security Act that adds to the sport in sport fishing.
Eventually, we are required to turn in our catch record cards to the state, where we are assured that someone interprets the ink blobs, which would go a long way to explain fisheries management in Washington.
Still, the April Fools’ jokes just keep on coming. There is a proposal to raise the price of fishing and hunting licenses for the first time since 2011 by 38 percent, while cutting funding for fish hatcheries and fisheries law enforcement.
Meanwhile, barrels of money from our fishing and hunting licenses goes to manage endangered species, invasive species and diverse inedible species that we don’t fish or hunt for.
Fishers and hunters pay. Birdwatchers, bikers and hikers play, mostly for free.
Ironically, most people who fish or hunt would not mind paying more for licenses if they had decent opportunities for fishing and hunting. Just look at the Quinault Tribe’s Salmon River Hatchery, where the native brood stock of Queets River steelhead are spawned, hatched and released into the Salmon River, a tributary of the Queets. The hatchery produces historic runs of revenue and fish that can be caught by anyone hiring a tribal guide for $150 a day.
On any given day during steelhead season there are between 100 and 150 anglers from all over the country catching these giant steelhead. Proving people will pay more to fish, but they want to catch and cook one.
The people of Washington should get a clue from the Quinault. They are restoring the ecosystem with native broodstock.
We’ll thank ourselves later if we do the right thing now.
_________
Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
