Once upon a time, when fishing was simple...

[h2ofwlr]

By John Cross, The Mankato Free Press Sun May 25, 2014, 06:11 AM CDT

Once upon a time, fishing was a pretty simple affair.

A rod-and-reel, some bait and tackle, perhaps a rowboat if you were lucky, and you were in business.

While the basic premise of angling — to catch fish — remains, it sure seems to have grown more complicated.

Visit a public boat landing on any weekend, but particularly this weekend which happens to be the opening of the bass season, to understand this.

Many bass-fishing aficionados will be motoring away in sleek boats sporting 200-horsepower motors and bristling with an array of electronics, including side-view sonars and trolling motors that read signals from satellites, to enable them to hover over a particular spot.

And those are just the things you can see.

Likely as not, tucked away beneath the deck are several $200 rods sporting $150 reels, thousands of dollars worth of tackle — all of this to catch a fish that few of the anglers are inclined to keep for dinner.

Walleye and panfish enthusiasts are not much different, except that they might toss a few fish into the livewell.

Regardless of which species trips your trigger, it’s not at all that difficult to burn through $60,000 or more for all of this, just to get a tug on a fishing line.

Certainly, that kind of dough gives new meaning to that old definition of a boat as a hole in the water that one pours money into.

But not much about fishing is as simple as it once was.

Forty years ago, when you bought your license, the list of regulations and laws that came with it was contained in a few pages of a fold-out pamphlet. Over the years, it has grown and grown some more.

In 1998, it took 67 pages to cover everything we needed to know.

The latest 2014 version now is a 92-page booklet. Or perhaps more accurately, a 92-page book.

An unfortunate sign of the times, the section on invasive species and the list of infested waters has ballooned to 14 pages and likely will only grow larger in the future.

Likewise, the list of lakes covered by special regulations, protective slots and different limits has expanded to fill 16 pages.

Certainly, it behoove you nowadays to take more than just a cursory glance at the rule book before hitting the water, lest one run afoul of the law.

Admittedly, some of the regulations are obvious, though a little curious. After all, who would use explosives or electricity, a couple of methods expressly prohibited to catch fish in Minnesota?

But there was a time when dynamite was easily bought at the local hardware store and was a common material found on many farms. More than one angler undoubtedly used a “DuPont spinner” to catch a few fish in such unsporting and dangerous fashion.

Locally, in the not-so-distant past, a conservation officer once discovered a boatload of nonresidents using an old military hand generator to stun and turn up catfish for easy pickin’ on the Minnesota River.

Some anglers still seem to have a problem understanding something as simple as daily and possession limits, judging by how often someone is cited for having a freezer bulging with hundreds of fillets.

There will always be a segment of the fishing fraternity with larceny in their hearts, scofflaws with an intent to break the rules, regardless of how simple or complicated fishing laws might be.

For the rest of us, our occasional brushes with the law are mostly out of ignorance or carelessness.

About 1.2 million fishing licenses are sold annually in Minnesota, the most of any state.

Assuming that just a third of those licenses buyers also grab a copy of the latest Minnesota Fishing Regulations, that’s about 400,000 copies of Minnesota Fishing Regulations put into circulation annually.

A regular best-seller, as it were. But a best-seller that probably is read cover-to-cover by only a few.

[Jrp267]

Last weekend we did the opposite of this. Simple fishing. Took the Jon boat out with the zebco 202 rods and let the kids fish. We dug the worms in the yard and caught sunfish as fast as the line hit the water.
I feel I have done the same to my duck hunting. This year on opener, boat 2 shotguns and a 1/2 dozen wood duck decoys.