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Date Posted: 14:26:59 02/17/07 Sat
Author: Don Johnson
Subject: Catch & Release and Alaska

Catch & Release and Alaska

Sport fishing in Alaska has a wild history but events at the last
Alaska Board of Fish meeting in Anchorage, have placed an
even more twisted nature to this already twisted past.

Some persons within sport fishing have come to the amazing
conclusion that since it is fun to sport fish, that you cannot
have enough sport fishing.
Kind of like you can't have enough money, unfortunately you
can have to much sport or commercial fishing. Alaska's
Constitution does guarantee its residents access to it's
surplus natural resources for both professional and recreational
activities. The question is how much of our fisheries resources
should be allocated to each? The State, not the Federal
government must make a lawful
and reasoned decision as to where these resources should go.
Equal reasonable access must be granted to both activities
when they are similarly situated like professional and
recreational sport fishing.
The allocation of fisheries within the sport fish USE has been
an extremly hot issue in Alaska and opinions vary from
requiring equal access to totally banning one or the other.

Big changes are taking place in how Alaska wants to sell its
fisheries resources. Historically Alaska just canned up its
salmon and shipped them to a buyer somewhere in the world.
The commercial fish market then started to change to a
"fresh fish" market.
Technology being what it was, the seller attempted to freeze
& transport fish in order to meet this market demand. The
market demand then changed to demanding "non-frozen fresh fish" thus fish farms were created to provide the product though-out the year.
At the same time when the demand for (non-frozen) commercial fish increased,
so did the demand for "professional sport fishing".
This new professional/recreational, experience began to
replace the "traditional recreational experience.

Currently the traditional recreational "meat experience" is now
losing its connection to the meat and thus only leaving the
experience. The Sport fish industry is now viewing the
same forces which drove Alaska's commercial fishermen to
madness over attempting to catch as many fish as possible in
order to make as much money as possible.
It is not that " Sport or Commercial Fishing can be the root of
all evil", it is that the
" the love of fish money can be the root of much evil".
It is sport fish greed which can make traditional sport fishing
values appear to go bye bye.
The human greed factor is just as deadly for traditional sport
fisherman as it was for the traditional commercial fisherman.
It appears that the greed factor within either industries has the
power to transform " normal " humans into wide-eyed, fish
crazed lunatics.
This change appears to be a slow progression towards a
"professional sport fisherman",
who either asks his client to pick up his fish in Alaska or just
play with it there.

Alaska's general fisheries industries appears to be moving
away from bringing the product to the market and instead
bringing the market to the product. This appears to be coming
down to an experience based market which values the
experience more than the actual product itself.
This market change is an extremly radical market departure
from the past and brings up some radical visions of the future.

Can you see a future Alaska which has no commercial gill net
fishing and is 80% hook and release fishing? Fish Fries become
a thing of the past and meals based on fish become
more symbolic than part of your diet?
Can you see a day when you may come to Alaska to fish but
but you may only eat fish by purchasing a fish
meal from a local retailer/restaurant?

Is fishing without taking home fresh fish our long term fisheries
goal which the KRSA and KRPGA has invisioned for our
fishing future? If fishless fishing is not the goal, what is the goal?
Is the goal some kind of limited mixture hook & release and catch
and keep like what we have today?
How much would a hook & release only experience change
our current traditional values?
We think we are having problems with the traditional
subsistance issue now?
What kind of signal does the catch & release only concept
send to the federal government, who already believe's that
Alaska has questionable fisheries management habits?
How can Alaska mix the catch & release concept with the
Subsistance issue, the two directly oppose each other?
Like it or not, we will nodoubt end up with some kind of a
mixture between these concepts and the traditional
subsistance issue.

The unbelieveable thing is that the State appears to be
chasing the catch & release concept as hard as the Federal
government is chasing the traditional subsistance issue.
We are not even talking about the State and Federal
government reading from the same page, it would be nice
if we could just get them to read from the same book!
It is like being in a room with two people reading out loud from
different books and you can't follow either of them. Which
book will we as a State read from, the catch & release Book
or Subsistance Book?

Don Johnson
Soldotna , Alaska

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