Have not been on site for awhile as I am recovering from shoulder surgery so this topic may have been covered.
Pennsylvania is starting to send out the propaganda about a need to have a junior fishing license for ages 12-15. Our local TU membership voted this week to voice our chapters opinion to the fish commission. It is a resounding NO to this idea. In an age when young people are leaving the outdoor sport to sit in front of the T.V., play video games, and sit in front of a computer screen forcing those who enjoy to outdoors to pay is not going to bring more fishermen to the stream. It will have the opposite effect and take them away.
As usual, the fish commission is using their experts to push the program (taking their lead from the PA. Game Commission).
Just letting those in PA. know about this push and let your fish commission know your thoughts.
I doubt this very accurate - “In an age when young people are leaving the outdoor sport to sit in front of the T.V., play video games, and sit in front of a computer screen”
The truth is they won’t end up in front of the T.V., playing video games, or sitting in front of a computer screen - they’ll end up on the streets. The money earned from licenses will be spent locking them up on drug charges!
Sad to say the least. What is needed is to get the kids out doing something worthwhile - not discouraging it.
In this day and age when parents claim they would be willing to pay higher taxes for better schools or other programs, it seems silly to me to object to a proposed $2.00-$3.00 license to fish.
But it’s OK to pay for the cell phones and music downloads, cable TV or satellite subscriptions in the hundreds of dollars a month range, video game and movie rentals and all types of recurring monthly entertainment fees that offer no lasting value like the fishing experience does.
This program is nothing new; it was championed by Ralph Abele in the 1970’s. I think IF the Commission uses the money for the intended purpose, children’s fishing programs; it can only be a good thing. Beside the cash flow benefit, it gives a young person a glimpse of social responsibility and hopefully respect for the laws and rules of our sport; and a little responsibility for today?s youth can only be a good thing. In addition, with kids and their tattle-tale mentality, I can envision the added benefit of having more informed and law abiding eyes on the waters on the lookout for violators. I?ll give the PAFBC the benefit of the doubt and assume the fee will remain nominal for awhile, but even if it doesn?t, has your cable bill or cell phone bill stayed the same since you got junior involved?
As far as having an effect on the overall number of kids fishing, it would be a sad state of affairs if a parent who is more than likely to be paying for the license, denies their kid the opportunity because of a $3.00 fee. Heck that’s less than the cost of the gas required to schlep the kids in the SUV to soccer practice!
As usual I?ll part with TU and give the PAFBC a resounding YES on this issue!
Coach;
Michigan has a voluntary $2.00 license for those under 18. I can’t find any statistics on how many 17 and under fishermen actually opt for it.
Could this be the first step to a Manditory license for youngsters? Hard to say!
Don’t forget the Michigan Fish-In August 14th to the 20th. The Holy Water’s of the Au Sable await you!!
I remember as a kid (12-15) having to get a license to fish in Maine.
I believe it was more than $2.00 or $3.00 even back then (mid.60s)
I felt kind of grown up having to get one and really liked the cool old tackle shop we went to.
Nowadays the price of a non-resident license in Maine gives me the shakes.
Just looked it up;
non-resident Junior license $9.00
no fee for resident juniors
[This message has been edited by dudley (edited 10 March 2006).]
The Fishy Commission in PA has been tossing this idea around for at least 4 years that I know of. It was brought up in a meeting about capital improvements I attended back in '02 after they had to close a hatchery that was polluting a class A wild trout stream… What really gets me is the commission has just come off the largest revenue gain in years with last years fee increases and sold 22% fewer licenses.
They have created a monster with the put and take fishery in the state, and now must feed it for they fear no one will fish if they don’t stock 4 million trout a year.
As a kid growing up in PA, I spent a lot of time outside, hunting, fishing, camping, and all the things that young boys did in those days.
I wore my single pair of sneakers to wade wet fishing in nearby trout streams during the summer, and when they dried out I wore them to play baseball, or mow the yard with our push mower. I delivered newspapers and earned $.03 each, and collected coke bottles when I could find them for their $.02 deposit. I even collected nightcrawlers around the neighborhood, kept them under the side of our front porch, and later sold them to other fishermen whenever I could find someone willing to part with a quarter for a dozen or so of them.
I often rode my bike 5 miles or more to fish for whatever kinds of fish I thought might be biting, and I can remember spending many days on end fishing in the local streams and rivers by myself or with a friend or two.
Even though that was many years ago, I can still remember knowing, and appreciating, that I didn’t need to buy a fishing license until I turned 16. Our familay wasn’t rich, but neither were we dirt poor, just close to it. I don’t know what would I would have done then if I had had to pay for a license, but I can tell you that even if it would have cost just a quarter, that would have represented a lot of money to me, and to my parents.
I hope that PA never charges a penny for a kid to go fishing. I’d much rather see the state cut back on their fish stocking and spend that money to take kids fishing. A lot of the magic of growing up is just being out there where fish are found, not having to buy a ticket to go there.
The last thing I want to see is less kids fishing but there are bigger mountains to climb than the $3.00 required for a proposed license. If the kid needs tackle, well…?
I used to cut lawns for $3.00 when I was a kid, those same lawns get cut these days for $30, that’s just one option. You know where I’m going with this, $3.00 isn’t an issue with MOST people and if it is, $3.00 isn’t hard to come by if a kid WANTS to work for it.
Cutting back on other programs isn’t fair to those fisherman that utilize the resources while only fishing by themselves. I don’t utilize half of the resources the state offers to fisherman but I’m sure those that do, don’t want to see any reduction to cover the costs associated with children’s programs. The other option is to eliminate the programs completely, which would really be a shame.
I don’t what I would have thought about paying $3.00 for a license back when I started fishing but I do know that I wouldn’t have let it stop me. I overcame the financial hardship of that Eagle Claw rod and Garcia 408 by doing what it took to get the cash, which was considerably more than what a license would have cost me back then.
In any case, if this thing ever comes to pass, I can think of no better way to spend some of my fishing dollars, than to sponsor a kid or 20. I also might suggest that some TU Chapters forgo their redundant self-serving banquets and put the money where it can bring some joy…sponsor some kids who can’t afford to fish.
That would be money well spent!
[This message has been edited by Bamboozle (edited 10 March 2006).]
Bamboozle, I don’t know if you are or are not involved in TU but I can tell you without our self-serving, redundant banquets my chapter would not have been able to work on stream resoration, sponsor children to classes, stock a pond every year with 2500 trout that only children under 16 are allowed to fish. Teach fly casting and fly tying to over 150 kids every year at youth day etc, etc.
[This message has been edited by Bearmon (edited 10 March 2006).]
Somewhere someone said it was a good idea if the stewards of the revenue used it for the intended purposes. This I will concede to. That might be true.
Unfortunately, our “stewards” continually prove their trustworthyness, NOT!..AND we as consumers CONTINUALLY accept their word!
You’re right. Keep selling it and we’ll keep buying it.
…lee s.
Aside from the cost of the license there is the “hassle factor”, which is probably a lot more of an impediment. When I was kid, I could walk to a sporting goods store that sold licenses. Now there is nobody in that neighborhood who does. It requires a drive of at least a half an hour to find a place that will sell a license. When my youngest nephew comes to town, he has to have a license. It takes about an hour and a half to get him one, after the drive out and back. That kills a good deal of our fishing time. The store has to be open, so no early morning trips until he has his license. If you want to sell fishing, and sell it to the kids, then you have to make it attractive and easy to get into. It seems to me to be a d!@#ed pity that drug dealers know and practice this so much better than our game and fish “administrators”.
Maybe the adults in charge of these programs need a lesson in responsibility for themselves. Maybe we need some public water that NEVER requires a license to fish, regardless of who you are or where you are from. I don’t mean prime trout water, I mean water within easy access of many people. Then we might see more people getting interested in the sport. Isn’t there an industry called “advertising”?
Ed
Added licenseing = added government intrusion.
Boyer, you do not sound like an a$$. It is the other end that you sound like. The end that thinks.
…lee s.
Bamboozle, I need a Tn fishing license each year. One can get that on-line as well. But I used to work for a company that processed credit card transactions and I have enough horror stories to scare people, at least myself, away from ever using a credit card on-line. I helped to put some professional thieves in jail for a long time, but not before some of them managed to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people’s money. I don’t use credit cards on-line. I am back to driving halfway across Nashville to get my license.
That said, there are a lot of under-16-year-old kids without credit cards. We are back to talking about putting barriers in front of kids that dissuade them from fishing. I still think that it is very short-sighted to require youngsters under the age of 16 to have to get a license.
No I’d not…But It would make things feel and seem different than it did as a kid for me…being able to go fishing any time any where and with whom ever I could…without any worry of weather I had the responcability of lugging around a licence to do so…
Don’t see many KIDS with the forethought to have them handy without dad having to chase after or chase after replacements every other week…
Don’t really know where my original post went…But seems they did’nt get to your repost of it…
Here’s my alternative to taking money from children. Make the commissioners take a pay cut. Both commissions in this state are bloated and mismanaged. John hit things right on the head. I had the same type of upbringing as he did. I have a very deep distrust of the PFBC and I think this is just another money grab by them. Cut the higher end salaries, pay the WCO’s more and leave the kids fish for free.
