Saltwater fishing license……Why or why not?

[wheresmy50]

Originally Posted by Mike P

That's the biggest benefit to a license, and the one that 90% of the people don't realize

I completely disagree that somehow licensing is going to make people realize how important saltwater surf fishermen are and we'll start getting more access (or whatever). No one cares about our pennies. They care about the influence of wealthy property owners.

Hunters pay for licenses and get treated like child molesters. If freshwater fishermen get anything, it's because of stocking and the gillions of dollars they spend on tackle. Also, anyone who thinks there's going to be one license in a state for fresh and salt or reciprocity has a lot more confidence in government than I do. They're going to have a separate license or a stamp, and each state will have their own. Then in a few years you'll need a separate striper stamp, then a fluke stamp, bonito stamp, albacore stamp, crab stamp, etc, etc, etc.

[Clogston29]

if there has to be one, i'd like to see a federal license. one that will apply to any state. the feds could divide the money derived from the licenses up between the states, based on the number of people living in each state that purchased a license.

if there is going to be one, I want to see some damn enforcement too. If I'm paying $x.xx for the right to fish for a year, its gonna piss me off when I'm walking out at dawn and see a bunch of guys fishing without licenses, knowing that they'll never get caught.