Bigger Fines for Poaching Needed!

[Pauken23]

Growing up in Minnesota with (yes) a 1 pole limit it took me by surprise to see 2 poles in Ohio/Michigan and more some other places. In all honesty, if I were to tell you where the populations hurt the most it's Minnesota... People go nuts for fishing there so yes there are tons of over fished lakes. I guess the difference is talking about landlocked smaller lakes compared to Great Lakes. IMO the United States and Canada have come to pretty good agreements as to how many fish each country can take. Commercial fishing takes all the fish in the agreement in Canada but (correct me if I'm wrong) in the US where it's only sport fishing we don't take our agreed upon limit. So... keep the limits on fish in place but why limit the poles? Also, why not up the limit on fish 1 per person? If Canada is taking their whole limit why shouldn't we? I don't know the exact numbers and am basing this on what I've read from multiple sources. Set the rules and regulations to fit the numbers of fish in the lake and keep everything healthy. Along those lines, why do regulations always seem to stay the same? IMO they should be changing every year if managed correctly. Guess the government doesn't really care... There are those who DO care in the government but just look at all the fisheries in this country and the lack of oversight. I feel like I could do a better job of setting rules and limits than the government. I guess the bottom line is the US spends our money elsewhere and it's up to us as fisherpeople to manage the populations ourselves. Along those lines, I feel that we all need to take stock of where we're fishing and what kind of fish we are catching and be responsible. It's up to us as the government doesn't have "remaining" funds...