Salt water fishing license? Would you pay?

[Gerry Zagorski]

Originally Posted by Detour66

The only way I would consider a SW license is if they extended the fishing seasons, more favorable and fair size limits and increase in the amount of fish we can keep. I'm not talking huge changes but something that makes it worthwhile to spend the money we already spend for a day fishing on the water.

That would be great but a fishing license and the possible revenue from it has nothing to do and no influence on how our state salt water regulations are set.

Here is an over simplified explanation of how it works

The state quotas are assigned at the federal level and all our state gets to do is submit regulation options they think will achieve those quotas. Those options then have to be approved by the feds to see if they meet the guidelines to not exceed the quota we were assigned.

So basically what that means is all the state can do is move around the start and end dates, how many days the season is open, size and bag limits. In general, the higher the bag limit and lower the size of a keeper fish results in fewer days the season can be open and a state license is not going to change that.