It's hard to imagine a management strategy more unintelligent than 'what the public wants.' That said, I can think of several DFW strategies that seem to run against public sentiment and yet they continue. It strikes me as a both convenient and opaque explanation. (Not to mention that public commenting is by its very nature a self-selecting group and I'm skeptical of it actually representing the public.) But "we were directed" may very well be a reality in a bureaucratic chain of command.
I'm certainly not here to defend the social media crowd. IMO, monetizing the outdoors is a bad direction for both the resource and the public. But having reached out to DFW employees in both WA and OR, my experience between the two agencies has been night and day as far as willingness, transparency, etc. You appear to have a relationship with someone(s) at the WDFW that enables you to have direct and clear communication about specific situations, and I appreciate you sharing that. But my experiences could be summed up as "If I can't avoid it and how quickly can I end this." Which admittedly doesn't help my skepticism of the "feedback" as determiner.
There are a lot of ways you could make those kinds of contacts, if you just make an effort to go to fisheries-related events and conferences you can pretty quickly make connections with people working in the DFWs, who can refer you to managers or may have the answers themselves. For instance, the Washington-British Columbia AFS Branch is having a meeting in March, as is the Oregon AFS chapter, both will likely have representatives there from the DFWs who you can make contact/friends with.
I've been successful with a few different agencies simply by asking questions about what is happening and why. At WDFW meetings in particular, the vast majority of people start with accusations and opposition - often displaying how little they actually understand in the process (I'm definitely not saying this is what you do, because I don't know what your experience has been). I've seen a lot of judgment from the general public. If everyone would replace that judgment with a bit of curiosity (I'm tempted to insert the Ted Lasso clip here), we'd be having more productive interactions that could lead to some really great things. I wish I knew how to get people to think this way.
Yes. Once the size distribution shifts toward smaller fish harvest rates decrease. Without predators like walleye and largemouth bass AND angler harvest it is very difficult to maintain high proportional size distributions in populations of highly fecund species like yellow perch.
I reached out to him as well from my work email to offer to sit down and discuss fish management issues with him. He's had concerns in the past that we met with him on and I was hoping to be able to discuss these issues with him, in good faith, as well.
Thank you for commenting here, Mike. I've been frustrated for a while about how many anglers blame WDFW for everything they think is going on when they have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. I've had great experiences with everyone from the Region 2 staff. If anglers would spend half of the time they waste bitching online actually trying to learn about our fisheries - or dare I say even volunteer to help, we could really accomplish some great things. I know a few guys that have some pretty popular YouTube channels, and I think I'm going to ask them to start putting out some information that may be helpful in steering perceptions into more productive conversations.
I’d say people tend to point, fair, but it’s not exactly a SuperBowl ring kind of history here.
