Even for anglers having hot fun in the
summertime does not include attending statewide hearings on rule
changes to Ohio's fishing regulations.
Then again, when the most serious of
the proposals involves reducing the number of yellow perch an angler
can keep per day from some obscure inland lake this lack of interest
becomes understandable.
Even when in one case just two visitors
took the time to stop by during the three-hour open house held today
(Saturday, August 10) at the Ohio Division of Wildlife's Fairport
Harbor Fisheries Research Station.
“Our summer open houses to discuss
proposed fishing and hunting rules are always leaner in terms of
attendance than the ones in the winter,” said Kevin Kayle, manager
of the fisheries research station.
“In many cases the proposals
represent housekeeping chores; trying to tie up loose ends and
clarify the rules.”
Kayle said the proposal to shrink the
daily bag limit on yellow perch taken from inland waters has little
to nothing to do with actual fisheries management.
Instead, says Kayle, the proposal is
intended to help lift the fog on the subject and as found within the
annual fishing law digest.
What happens is that some anglers read
the fishing law digest and see the 40-per-day limit on yellow perch
and then mistakenly believe it applies everywhere in Ohio, including
Lake Erie.
And as most anglers know, the daily bag
limit on Lake Erie-caught yellow perch is 30 fish.
“It doesn't happen a lot but it does
happen,” Kayle said.
Another proposed change is to lump
saugeyes and saugers with walleyes into the daily bag limit for Lake
Erie and its tributaries.
The thing is, says, Kayle, with some
frequency saugeyes especially have appeared on the stringers of
spring-time anglers who are on the hunt to catch walleye from the
Maumee River.
Mostly these saugeyes are stragglers
from impoundments further up the Maumee River watershed, says Kayle.
Another modification the Wildlife
Division is seeking is the allowance of outboard engines of up to
10-hp on 182-acre Highlandtown Lake. Presently only electric motors
and hand-propulsion are allowed there, says Kayle.
Further, the Wildlife Division is
seeking adding some lakes to the state's list of inland lakes with a
30-per-day limit of crappie.
Meanwhile the limit would go away on
other inland lakes. Among them would be Long Lake, part of the
Akron-area's popular 1,192-acre Portage Lakes chain.
Still exempted from a daily bag limit
of crappie would Pymatuning Reservoir, a system that is jointly
managed with Pennsylvania and which uses that state's angling rules
for the entire body of water.
16,349-acre.
A few items impacting hunting also are
in the proposed rule change pipeline.
They include restricting wild turkey
hunters to carrying no more than one hunting implement.
Another would remove the 3,002-acre B&N
Coal Lands from the state's list of wildlife areas open to the
public. This request is being made by the B&N Coal Co., the
proposed rule change information says.
Of course, citizens are free to exploit
the opportunity provided by the open houses. They can do this by
chiming in with there own suggestions to the Wildlife Division's
ledger of proposed rule changes.
And since I was one of the two persons
attending the fisheries research station's open house I filled out a
response form with two suggestions.
The first request involves the state's
“frog and turtle regulations” and found page 11 of this year's
fishing law digest. Here the state says that licensed anglers can
shoot frogs or snapping turtles and soft-shelled turtles with long
bows (presumably including compound bows) though not crossbows.
My reaction to this exclusion has
always been “Why?”
I mean, crossbow have been legal tools
for the taking of small-game and big-game animals in Ohio for years
and years.
To continue this discriminatory policy
after such a lengthy time does not make sense and I doubt can be
justified by any stretch of logic, especially since crossbows are
legal to use in angling for rough fish.
The second point on my regulatory wish
list isn't so much a request for a change in the law.
Rather, it's a plea I've repeatedly
made to a few Wildlife Division officials.
Alas, these officials either forgot my
verbal request or else stored it in the round file, never to be
retrieved - let along alone remembered - and acted upon.
My request: Add the bullhead to the
list of eligible Fish Ohio species. The agency doesn't even have to
be a hair splitter by differentiating between black, white, yellow
(or even purple of there is a purple bullhead).
But the bullhead is about the most
ubiquitous game fish species found in Ohio. Big-shouldered rivers and
small, lazy-running streams, monstrous lakes to small farm ponds,
public waters and private lakes, they all contain robust populations
of bullheads.
What's more bullheads are egalitarians
about who can catch them. They are taken by ice anglers in the dead
of winter, by folks using cane poles with a knot of nightcrawler and
even by dedicated bass man flipping the latest soft-plastic bait.
So while I am disappointed the bulk of
Ohio's anglers and hunters take a detour around these twice-annual
regulation open houses I am thankful the Wildlife Division hosts
them.
That is, so long as the agency finally
recognizes the legitimacy of my request to add the bullhead to the
list of Fish Ohio qualifying fish species.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
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