In a recent survey targeted at fly fishing consumers, Angler’s Covey (www.anglerscovey.com) asked: “What keeps you from fly fishing more often?”
61.4% responded that “The river is always too crowded” as a factor.
When Angler’s Covey owner David Leinweber followed up with a focus group the reply was: “Elevenmile Canyon was too crowded.”
Said Leinweber: “It made me realize that 8 miles of river is getting too much attention and the other 6,000 miles of streams in Colorado must be empty.”
Granted, Angling Trade has keyed public access (and river crowding) as a major factor standing in the way of new (and existing) fly-aficionado participation for some time. See Angling Trade’s “Access” issue, specifically focused on this issue, December 2008 as well as Ben Roman’s piece Fish Free or Die below.
Is access a key issue in your area? And how do we work around this? Going beyond trout? Increasing public awareness of the options already available? Give us your feedback in the comment box at the bottom of this page.
Fish Free Or Die
Written by Ben Romans
I just won the lottery. Bam! Two hundred million dollars, just like that. Who knew a string of ambitious little ping-pong balls stuck in a vacuum tube would decide my destiny? No more of “the man” keeping me down, he can kiss my ass, I quit.
First thing I’m going to do is by my little slice of heaven. River frontage of course, with at least a mile, maybe two, of the best riffle-pool trout water I can find. I’ll build some benches under shade trees; maybe add a small barbeque pavilion. It will be the perfect piece of water—filled to the nuts with 22-inch browns. Everyone will want to fish it. Want to hear the best part? You’re all invited.
I want to redefine what it means to be a riverfront landowner in the 21st century. Go against the grain. Areas closed to the public would reopen, all in the name of the greater good. Damn it’s nice to dream.
I believe humanity is inherently entitled to the gifts of nature, no matter your background or wealth. The outdoors is a band-aid for the soul. When we manufacture the fish, manipulate the water, manicure the fauna, and slap on a price tag, it cheapens the experience, and embarrasses me as an outdoorsman.
Planting abnormally huge, dim-witted hatchery fish and charging untold amounts of money to catch them only adds insult to injury. Pay-to-play cliques hook these marvels of pellet nutrition and the consequence is instant nitro fuel for the ego; a weekend-warrior’s golden ticket to boast like they’re angler-of-the-year after hoodwinking a 26-inch slab of piscatorial Purina. It’s false advertising; the angling equivalent of high-fence hunting operations—instant rewards without the quest.
The rise of pay-to-play and the overall privatization of flyfishing is the death knoll for the industry. It’s forcing more anglers to occupy less public space and one reason participation continues to decline. From a financial standpoint, we can’t afford to lose any more of the sport’s public component than is already lost. The fly shop owner, the gear manufacturer, and the small-town tourist economies depend on “free range” fishing, and the best way to ensure its survival, is through a united front.
I know I’ll make enemies saying this, but Colorado and Wyoming, you guys got problems. Look at Utah, they’re finally getting the picture Montana’s Stream Access Law painted over twenty years ago. You salty-dogs, you’re next. Up and down both coastlines beachfront homeowners are pushing anglers off the sand under the guise that property lines extend to the water.
New Zealand gets the idea. This past September an overwhelming majority passed a bill in parliament that secures public access to the country’s great outdoors. Rural Affairs Minister Damien O’Connor said the “Walking Access Bill,” which creates a Commission to provide leadership on access issues, goes to the heart of what most New Zealanders regard as their fundamental birthright.
“The Bill builds on the legacy of public access established over the last century and a half and creates the Walking Access Commission to clarify, promote and extend walking access to lakes and waterways throughout New Zealand,” O’Connor says.
I’m with O’Connor, we should be creating entry points, not selling them. When a private interest “outbids” the public for access rights, or claims the streambed as their own, it angers me. I feel cheated and take it personally, as if someone is stealing from me.
Such is the case with the Farmer’s Union property of the North Fork of the South Platte River outside Denver, Colorado—once an incredibly popular destination because of its quality fishing and proximity to the mile-high city. For years, these miles of riverbank operated as an open-ended club where 80 to 100 members paid yearly dues, brought guests, and held events like church retreats and weddings. Non-members could access the water with a guide for a nominal fee, strikingly similar to the daily rod-fee structure used on Montana’s famous Paradise Valley spring creeks.
That changed last winter when someone sealed an $80,000 a year, five-year lease agreement with the Farmer’s Union for exclusive fishing rights. The former members, local guides, and other interested parties (like area fly shops) were blindsided, and for Dan Hydinger, owner of The Hatch fly shop in Pine Junction, it was a tough pill to swallow.
“This was a nice piece of water. People from Denver could fish, it didn’t cost an arm-and-a-leg, and it was easy to take your kid or wife. Just a quality experience for the Average Joe,” Hydinger says. “This is the third decent chunk of water we’ve lost to private interests in the last year or two and it’s starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Even if people weren’t booking our guides to fish at Farmer’s Union, they were at least stopping in the shop on their way to the water.”
Jim Cannon of the Blue Quill Angler fly shop has a different take. Rather than denounce the new Farmer’s Union arrangement, he insists on looking at the bright side and notes that Colorado is a great place to mix private and public fisheries.
“Let’s choose our battles,” Cannon says. “In reality, Colorado has a tremendous amount of public water, and yeah, it was disappointing to see the Farmer’s Union go, but there are a lot of other places for people to fish. Most of the rivers in this state aren’t very big so crowding is a problem, especially this close to Denver. Our guides primarily fish and guide on public water, but it’s nice to have the private areas for those that want the opportunity to catch bigger fish and get away from people.”
And so it goes—two different people with two different opinions. Its one reason why the issue of access has become such a hot potato and the movement to privatize water is splintering some circles of the sport. On one side are those that say privatization is good; that landowners have a vested interest in their property and are ideally suited to safeguard watersheds as they see fit. On the other side of the coin are the majority; public access advocates willing to take their fight to court.
Nobody knows this more than Donny Beaver, owner of the Spring Ridge Club in central Pennsylvania. Beaver became flyfishing’s poster child for greed when he tried to sequester public water for personal profit. He tried distancing himself from the image by playing the “savior” role (in my opinion, a smoke-and-mirrors public-relations stunt propelling the myth his private-land stewardship benefited the river as a whole), but this only provoked his critics.
In February 2007, the courts handed Beaver a smackdown, but it wasn’t a knockout. He had already put his show on the road, landed in Colorado (www.alpineriverclub.com), and locked up private leases with a similar pay-to-play scheme as the Spring Ridge Club. You can fish the river if the price is right, otherwise (to quote ol’ Woody) “If you ain’t got the do-re-mi honey, folks, you ain’t got the do-re-mi.”
His business model is legal in Colorado, but doing something just because you have the right, doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing to do. Look for the Spring Ridge Club in a town near you! He’s planted additional roots in northwestern Pennsylvania on some popular Great Lakes steelhead water—another area plagued by problems with private landowners, crowds, and access issues.
The outcome of the Spring Ridge Club fiasco was important for the Keystone State because it set a precedent. Approximately 83 percent of the land adjacent to Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams is in the hands of private owners. Outdoorsmen need to stay united or risk losing the remaining 17 percent.
Like it or not, “private” is word that sometimes motivates us as anglers—that vision of casting over naive fish is what dreams are made of. Nevertheless, it’s also a marketing buzzword, a catalyst for those with the Benjamins. Punch the words “private flyfishing” into a Google search bar and you’ll see what I’m saying. I’m sure having a personal slice of Heaven is the tops, but there are risks and consequences with closing paradise; namely the future of our sport.
Enter James Cox Kennedy—a malevolent thorn in the side of Montana’s Stream Access Law. Cox owns thousands of acres along the Ruby River, and while the river isn’t one of the state’s “marquee” destinations, it is a well-known fishery frequented by anglers bouncing between the Beaverhead, Jefferson, and Big Hole watersheds.
At some point he decided the Stream Access Law wasn’t his cup-of-tea, chased anglers and floaters away, and erected fences to keep people out—not keep cattle in as he claims. Escalation ensued. Cox replaced barbed wire fences with electric and connected the barriers to county bridges. This angered, but didn’t stop anglers who risked a quick jolt for an afternoon on the water. When the electric fence short-circuited one gentleman’s pacemaker, however, Cox’s henchmen removed it, and restrung barbed-wire to the guardrails of the bridge.
At issue was whether the Ruby was publicly accessible (which meant crossing Cox’s fences) where the road/bridge and river easements meet. After a public exhibition of finger pointing between the Public Land & Water Access Association Inc. (PLWA), Madison County commissioners, and Cox’s attorneys, the dispute landed in court. In early October 2008, District Court Judge Loren Tucker issued a split decision, but in the big picture, the stream-access advocates were clearly victorious.
“His (Cox’s) implicit argument is that a county road may not be utilized in the vicinity of water. That argument is unsupported by authority or by logic,” Tucker said.
What does that mean? Basically, Cox (and other state landowners) can attach fences to the bridge, but the public is allowed to cross and make their way to the water. The burden to ensure fences meet legal specifications rests on the shoulders of the county commissioners.
“We just wanted some accountability,” says John Gibson, president of the PLWA. “We’ve always argued there is a public right-of-way that overlaps where public rivers and public bridges meet. We’ve never asked Cox to remove his fences; we just wanted a reasonable and safe way to access the Ruby. Rather than address that issue in court, Cox and his attorneys tried chipping away at the Stream Access Law; calling it unconstitutional and such. Well, Judge Tucker shut’em down and his decision blew their arguments out of the water.”
The Ruby/Cox case strengthened the Stream Access Law in Montana and set a powerful precedent for other bridge access points within the state. This case, and the decision against Donny Beaver, is proof that unified sportsman can prevail for the greater good. David can still beat Goliath—no matter how big his portfolio may be.
So what’s the purpose of my rant? What did it take me 2,000 words to say that I can simply summarize in one sentence? Simple—we need to protect, enhance, and promote the public resources already available and pursue other public-access options with landowners to help facilitate a growth in outdoor participation. State-managed incentive programs like Montana’s Block Management and Idaho’s Access Yes are steps in the right direction. Overpriced, overrated, overvalued pay-to-play clubs send the wrong message to the next generation of anglers—we should be welcoming them to the water, not asking for American Express.
Public resources are just that—public. We all have a stake in them. Every acre lost to the private sector chips away at the heart of our sport. Get fired up and join or contribute to organizations making a stand on a national level like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (www.trcp.org) and the Trust for Public Land (http://www.tpl.org), or state level like the PLWA (www.plwa.org) and Pennsylvania Land Trust Association (http://conserveland.org). As an industry, and as an angling family, we need to remain vigilant and seek ways to open up more water for future generations. We cannot afford to lose public resource footholds in the name of aristocratic vanity.
4 Comments
You know, it never ceases to amaze me how the writers of fly flshing seem to feel the universe revolves around the American west. Believe it or not, the entire country doesn’t fit into your square hole. Sure, I want to protect as much public water and access to them as anyone. But when you paint everything with your broad brush, you do some of us a disservice. Our shop manages about 10 miles of private access water in north Georgia and we’re proud not only of the service we provide but of the work we do in paying it forward to create new anglers and educate them to the finite resources we all enjoy. And I can prove to you that we have created business for the fly fishing industry out west by teaching our regional anglers the fine art of fly fishing on our local waters and growing them into traveling sportsmen and women whose passion leads them to the “holy grail” of trout, the Rockies. In Georgia, there are over 4,000 miles of designated trout water. My estimation is that less than 25 of those miles are managed as private for-profit businesses; a little over two-thirds of 1%. The private venues are obviously not a threat to public access yet they do play a role in creating a new generation of fly anglers. Consider that today’s urban dweller (our shops are located within 90 minutes of over 5 million people) with limited recreational time is seeking an experience which gives them the best opportunity at a successful fishing trip, some degree of solitude and an opportunity to learn something that will help them become a better angler. With our private streams, we can help them with all of this. As we all know, the way you create new anglers is to get them on fish early and we do that most of the time. As an aside, currently law in Georgia requires you to pay property taxes on the stream bed if you own both sides of the stream. In my book, if I’m paying taxes on a piece of property, I should be able to determine who gets to use it. Also, consider the tremendous pressure on north Georgia landowners to subdivide their mountain farms and sell them off one acre at a time versus maintaining the integrity of the tract and actually protecting the resource. Most of our landowners from whom we lease streams are doing all they can to avoid transforming their property into the next cookie-cutter development and the lease fees we pay them helps reach that goal. It’s far from an issue of greed, as seems to be evidenced by Mr. Beaver’s actions, when you consider a 1500 acre tract of mountain property could easily be sold for over a hundred million dollars and the families are willing to combine farming, hunting and fishing leases to simply keep it from being auctioned off on the courthouse steps. By the way, when I pass by the spring creeks of Paradise Valley or the private sections of the Frying Pan River, I don’t feel a sense of resentment toward the landowners, just respect that they are being good stewards of the resources entrusted to them. Maybe it’s just me but owning land is, I think, one of the fundamental rights of being American.
Here in Maine, the true quality fisheries we have are being loved too death while miles of water with marginal fishing goes all but unused.. I see the same thing in neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts.. The issue is that there is simply not enough quality angling to meet the demand for such.. Meanwhile there is a glut of marginal fishing that far exceeds the demand for it.. Here in NE, strict regulations equals good fishing.. Conversely, liberal regulations means marginal fishing.. As a result, the imbalance would be real easy to address – manage more water under stricter regulations and create more quality fishing! You would think that the fisheries managers would see this and act accordingly.. Why not adjust your policies to better address the supply-and-demand? Why let some resources suffer overuse while others see little if any use? We as a group need to be more proactive in regard to showing our leaders that the game has changed and they have not always changed with it.. Most F&G managers know this but will not change the status quo unless pressured to do so.. The trend is clear – most of the country has a shortage of truly good fishing and a glut of marginal fishing.. The former is being loved too death while the latter barely gets used.. This makes no sense to me.. If we worked as hard at getting our fair share of the pie as others do to keep more than what they can use we would not have this problem..
This is really a race to the bottom and state organizations have been slow to respond. It truly is a zero-sum game. Actually, it’s worse than that. Like increasingly posted land hurts hunting, there isn’t a linear relationship. A few spots lost will be an unfortunate inconvenience. Limit access enough and a tipping point is approached where a LOT of anglers on the edge get pushed right out of the sport. Now, the greed heads and assorted jackasses might think this doesn’t effect them, but with fewer anglers, less of what anglers have done to fix and protect fisheries will be done. This will effect all anglers.
State organizations, the heavy hitters who can muster big bucks, need to establish programs, stamps, permits, regulations or otherwise garner cash from those who spend, gosh, $40 on a license (not even a spool of fly line) to flat out purchase or lease access and land and waters of interest or are threatened by closure. There is only so much length of a trout water. Smallmouth rivers may only have so many ways to get down to them (God knows my Allegheny does) and put-in/take-outs to do floats.
Regulations can be imposed later. Habitat work can wait. When Donny Beaver attracts his larded Almighty Whiteys to your section of Heaven, it’s OVER baby. Until he’s in the ground or floating face-down, you won’t get it back. Big money destroys enough in this world. Access, while expensive, actually cuts these pigs off at the knees. Then they have to compete on the level with everybody else. And if there is ONE thing that rich, fat white men hate, it’s having to play on a fair, level ground with us every day rabble.
In all honesty, I am far more worried about what we are doing with many of our state owned public waters than what is being done with many private waters… The feds seem to get it to some degree although they are by no means perfect.. Most states have enough public water that if managed properly would negate the affects of private water.. In some cases private land owners are far better stewards of the resource than public land owners.. They often protect the resource from angler exploitation that would otherwise occur and often do habitat work that states cannot afford nor would see as a priority.. Don’t agree, come up to Maine where the private sector timber giants remove headwater canopy, cut right to the edge of ponds, decimate deer yards, etc.. See where while imperiled wild salmonid populations go unaddressed, stocked fisheries get tons of attention! In many cases the public at large would exploit a resource that is being protected by the private sector through restricted access.. Here in the NE, most so-called “general law” waters are not worth the time to fish them due to angler exploitation and the resulting marginal fishing.. While private ownership that takes access away from the general public looks bad on paper, it is often the only way to preserve resources when the public sector sees exploitation as the best use of said resource.. I guess I see it like wilderness areas.. While I may never get there I am still glad they exist..