[JohnR]

There was a meeting tonight at the Coastal Institute to discuss a proposed new fishtrap and move of one fishtrap at the Center Wall and West Wall of the Point Judith Harbor of refuge... The RIMFC can only recommend for or against the application to DEM and have no true decision making in the proposal. The RIMFC's responsibility was purely to have public input into the topic.

If I have my facts correct, Tom Hoxie was applying for a permit to be able to relocate one 450' fishtrap to an area just west of the end of the West Wall, with necessary securing lines attaching to the wall amd applying for a new 700' spot along the Center Wall. Mr. Hoxie said that his fish traps would hardly interfere with recreational fishing along the West Wall and that he would remove the trap around June 15. The Center Wall trap , I did not hear any dates on but he was looking to place a 700' trap there. Both spots would certainly impede boat fishing and the trap on the West Wall would likely interfere with te schoolies moving up and down the wall at this spring ritual spot. He personally assured me that the beach was better to fish than the wall either way - he may be right but I'm not convinced...

Now several people, for and against this topic, vouched for Tom Hoxie as an upstanding guy, and I'll assume that to be the case. He was pretty tweaked by the general mood of the forum, which was mostly against his proposal. And my impression is that he felt that the right information was not getting out properly.

Others have said that for a net fishery, this is pretty clean too ("clean" will be a topic for another day - those that were there tonight understand what I mean). About the only thing that I asked was if he could put it anywhere else, and I didn't really get much response from him.

In a nutshell, every club that had a representative and a couple Rod & Reel Commercial guys stated they were opposed to it. A couple commercial guys that were left (most left after an earlier discussion of clam bed openings) voted pro trap applications.

A motion was made to have the Council recommend against the trap and was seconded. Two people voted to recommend against and three recommended for moving ahead and then, and I'm not entirely sure what or why, a motion was then made to table the discussion until the next meeting, which did pass....

So, as I read it, the vast majority of those there were against it but the commercial leanings of the council tabled the topic until the next meeting....

I have some other observations on the meeting that I'll get into tomorrow...


G'nite...