[jeffsod]

As my folks have a summer place in town I have been following this story for the last two years with great interest. I have never been a big user of herring as bait but have seen the results they can produce locally and do try and get out with fresh dead herring a couple times a year. I find it ironic that you have to travel thru or over land in the town of Dennis to access the run yet the town fathers of Harwich have no interest in sharing the resource with their neighboring town even. If you have followed the chain of articles back to last year then you know a couple of the big supporters or promoters this whole thing are Cyd Zeigler of Cyd Zeigler Plumbing and Hemeon of Hemeon's Garage/Lawn & Power Equipment repairs. Now these guys are only watching out for the good ol local boys and not necessarily the resource as a whole, so those of you who think otherwise don't kid yourself. This was demonstrated last spring when immediately after they passed the new town bylaw allowing that only Harwich residents could take herring they raised/increased the allowable daily take from the standing quantity of 12 per person per day to 48! Then when they got called on the law they tried to change it back but said that residents only could still take one 5 gallon bucket of herring per week. Don't ask me how they intended on Monitoring this. What I found infuriating was when I inquired about getting herring since my parents own a home and pay taxes in the town of Harwich they said unless it was a permanent residence then no I couldn't take herring!!! What?????? You have to be kidding me. Again, this goes back to the good 'ol local boys mentality! Now a lot of why this all came about stems from eyewitness accounts of rampant poaching at the run. I had visited the run in prior years and can believe it to be true as it would take on a circus like atmosphere on the weekends sometimes. One of the biggest events triggering the changes was a supposed upper cape bait shop coming down with large tanks and taking herring to sell as bait for canal fisherman. The bottom line is that the run was due for changes but such severe and dramtic change in policy was uncalled for and even the local harbormaster was againest them. Why they couldn't go to system like the town of Middleboro has is beyond me. Now that is a well managed run that has a tremendous resource of returning herring every year yet they have found a way share the resource with out of town residents by allowing a certain number of non residents permits every year. In the process get get a little money back to pay for the monitoring and management of the run.