The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

I have, at times, been accused of being selfish, of promoting wild fish and catch-and-release for my own personal gain.

"You fly fishermen just want it all for yourself," folks said.

That attitude has slowly died away. As the biological evidence has mounted and education has spread, more and more people have come to see the value of naturally producing fish in their own natural environment.

When the Metolius River was finally changed over to this form of management, it sent a message that a broad and diverse group of people from business interests to environmentalists had finally come to agreement. It said the majority of folks wanted to see the long-term health of the river preserved for this and future generations

Sadly there are a few folks around who still don't get it.

The other night I had a phone call from a friend.

My friend's beer-drinking buddies where going down to the Metolius on a regular basis and harvesting fish. They where plunking worms in the best holes down below Bridge 99. Their effectiveness could not be denied. From large rainbows to mature bull trout, they where catching them all. My friend had been there for the bragging session when the fish bodies where displayed.

"I told them it wasn't right," he told me. "I told them they had to quit."

He wanted me to get the dirty work done. My friend, a bit of an outlaw himself, could not go the full distance and turn his friends in to the law, but he wanted the police to know. He wanted increased enforcement. If his buddies kept it up he wanted them to get caught.

I did my part. I called law enforcement, but I didn't have much hope that the offenders would actually be arrested. Knowing that the poachers are often fishing on the weekend probably isn't enough. Law enforcement simply doesn't have the manpower to cover the territory - if game violators want to remain undetected they probably will.

All game laws are really that way; they depend on voluntary compliance. If folks don't get it, and don't agree to abide by the laws, there's really not much that can be done.

People like the ones that are killing fish illegally, simply don't know or don't care about what they are doing to you and to me and to everyone else in the area. They don't realize how valuable a resource those fish are. To me it is the ultimate act of selfishness to kill fish that belong to all of us.

I do see one glimmer of hope in this sordid tale - the outlaw friend who took the time to call me. It could not have been easy to for him to stand up in the midst of a fish harvest celebration and say, "This is wrong."

It took courage for him to do that.

By standing up, he is saying, "It is me, it's your best friend sitting right here across the table that you are hurting with your thoughtless selfish acts." That, perhaps, has more meaning than all the enforcement you could throw at a poacher.

If you know a violator, if you run across someone who just doesn't care, tell him what you think. A selfish person is likely to see it as his right to be selfish - until there is a face on the person he has harmed.