There's a couple decent points but hook and line vs commercial fishing methods and fish vs mammal management are pretty poor comparisons. I don't think anyone here has pushed for less regulation, they've just pointed out they don't believe more regulation on guides is the solution. I'm not a big fan of guides but if the goal is to reduce harvest I think it should be reduced limits across the board. Even a reduced limit would have more effect on guides/nonresidents as there is no freezer limit for residents.
That’s why I made sure to include that regulation should be at scale. Because it’s not all apples to apples. Which is kind of what the original question is about. I don’t think everyone should bear the burden if a commercial group over exerts a resource. Would you still think this way if guide boats did a 5x and in 10 years and they had to drop the limit of walleyes for everyone to 2 fish because of it? Even just limiting guided fishermen to one over 24” per day would be a massive step in the right direct and have little effect on their business.
There wouldn’t be a 50lb halibut within 50 miles of shore from Anchorage to Ketchikan if there wasn’t stringent restrictions on the commercial sport fishing fleet separate from people in personal craft. Regulations include guided fishermen have a one over/one under size limit, a very low season limit, and it’s closed to commercial use twice a week. None of those regulations apply to people in a person craft. Resident or not. While guided rules apply to both resident and non resident fishermen.The guides embrace the rules because they know the fishery wouldn’t last if that massive fleet was given a free for all. And judging by how many new operations are popping up each year with $250,000 boats and a winter home in Hawaii, they’re doing just fine.
Touching one a couple other points people made:
I remember very well numerous unnamed perch lakes getting blown up and fished out in the late 90s and early 2000s. Not a guide to be seen and no social media. And still within weeks the place was covered in vehicles from Wisconsin and Minnesota.
For a lake to be managed by the state it just needs public access. That is a simple as having a road/section line running into the lake or the water to be within the public ROW. So just a lake next to a gravel road has public access and can be managed as such. The G&F does summer and winter water quality monitoring at almost every public water body that has historically held fish (it was my job ~15 years ago). They are not going to stock a lake that dies every year. With the cyclical drough conditions over the last few years and the massive nitrogen run off associated with our current agriculture practices, I doubt many of these small lakes have maintained a steady enough dissolved oxygen level year over year to hold fish recently. Big snow years like it sounds like is happening this year sure don’t help either.
