wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:
George Cleveland wrote:
nightmare scenario snipped
... So if you want to come to
WI and fish for small stream brookies you might want to make the
effort soon.

May God Damn the Republican Party.

Amen to that brother, Amen to that.

Um, I, for one, would love to hear the theory under which you and your
brother seem to:
a) feel the taxpayers of the US of A should subsidize you or anyone else
with free or essentially-free public fishing,

The laws concerning stream navigation don't have anything to do
with fishing per se but rather are founded on the commerce clause
in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Basically, if a stream is
navigable it has to be open to the public, not necessarily for
fishing but for transporting goods.

In Wisconsin a stream is deemed navigable if you can float a
canoe on it during its highest water. By that standard most
Wisconsin streams are deemed navigable and are therefore public
waters. You can fish on public water so long as you stay in
the water (or below the high water mark, that changes from time
to time) and don't cross private land to get in the water.
This is not hard because every bridge on every public road in
Wisconsin has a public easement, so if you enter the water
at a bridge you're entering on public land.

What the GOP wants to do is change the definition of navigable
from canoe at highest water to six hundred foot tow barge full
of iron ore at lowest water. (Or something like that. ;-)

--
Ken Fortenberry