Neil Travis' article this week prompted me to "Sound Off".

We recently lost access to a good stream for steelhead here in Ohio. Landowners in Ohio also own the land under the stream and can deny access to their stream property. This has led many fishermen to wish for a change of riparian rights to the public interests such as the stream laws in Montana and Michigan. The particular access that I am talking about was for the past dozen years opened to the public by the private landowner whose house sits 50 yards from the stream. They never used to deny access and were very friendly people who would wave at you as you waded by when I started fishing there a dozen years ago. I realized that I fished there only through their goodwill, and so would fish there only twice a season (or less!) so as not to wear out my welcome.

Over the years more anglers found out about it and of course traffic increased. They eventually posted their property with numerous hard to miss signs granting everyone permission to access and only asking anglers not to fish in front of their house. It's only about 300 yards to get past their house and gain access to a couple of miles of stream.

This year so many anglers ignored their simple request, not only fishing in front of their house, but also, using their front yard as a toilet. The whole stream by their house is visible from their living room so you can imagine what they got exposed to! I had even approached a couple of anglers fishing there and asked them if they had missed the signs and they replied that the owners don't mind because they had seen other anglers fishing the same riffle in front of the house. A friend of mine approached another group of anglers and they said it really didn't matter if they fished there because they heard the owner was going to close it off anyway!!! What kind of convoluted moronic logic is that?!

These owners could not have been more accommodating over the years in not only allowing access, but also allowing parking on their property. I can only imagine what the owners must have been thinking as they saw their generosity rewarded with blatant trampling of both their property and their privacy.

I am also mad at myself for not finding a way to help other fishermen respect their wishes. I guess I believe as Neil Travis does that the stream is no place for confrontation, but I am not feeling so good about that now.

In a larger sense, I think this total disregard for common courtesy is maybe one of the biggest threats to our state's steelhead program. Once most accesses and streams are off limits what's the point of the program. I am sure the aforementioned owners wish the state never stocked steelhead. I know that area anglers may think ill of the owners but on this one I am totally on the landowners side. Also, with these kinds of attitudes towards private property and privacy, even states such as Montana and Michigan could some day rewrite their laws and turn access back over to the land owners.

I am sure this subject has been debated many times and long before I came to this site but Neil's article just got me a little depressed about lack of common courtesy and then fired up enough to get this off my chest. Sorry for being longwinded and on the soapbox, because in all honesty I don't have any answers or positive suggestions. I'm just mad.