When I was a boy, a friend and I would go down to a creek halfway between his farm and mine with bamboo poles, string, hooks and worms and we’d fish the afternoon away. Who knows what we caught? They were just fish. And we were just boys. We threw them back in and when we got tired of catching them, we went home again.
Forgive me if I think of that time as the good old days but sometimes I do. I thought that way just the other day, in fact, when I read through a “fact sheet” from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources about fishing at the province’s Conservation Area ponds. Now, I know that very little in our world nowadays is simple any more. But does that mean that everything has to be complicated?
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The fact sheet is two pages long and contains 15 sections. Offenders of these laws can be evicted from the Conservation Area or even charged.
Explain to me, please, how a person might enjoy an afternoon fishing while trying to remember the following.
• Ontario residents under 18 or 65 and older and the physically challenged do not need a fishing licence, otherwise, please be prepared to produce it if asked.
• An angler may only use one fishing rod at a time. Two lines are permitted when ice fishing.
• Children who are fishing must be capable of tending their own lines.
• You must not allow fish to spoil. Please release what you won’t eat.
• You must release any fish not hooked through the mouth.
• Catch and release fishing works better if you crimp your hooks to make them “barbless.”
• You should minimize your handling of fish to be released. Please make sure your hands are wet, for example, when handling fish so that you won’t remove their protective coating of slime.
• There are no closed seasons, catch limits or size limits for pumpkinseed (sunfish), rock bass, bluegill, perch, crappie, catfish, suckers and carp, common fish which are easily caught.
• You must not purposely fish for trout before April 27 or bass (largemouth and smallmouth) before June 29 and you must immediately return them to the water if you catch them earlier.
• Fishing for largemouth or smallmouth bass before the season opens can seriously jeopardize future fishing because male bass aggressively defend their nests. Removing a bass, even momentarily, from its brood could allow predators to gobble up that year’s production.
• It is up to you to conserve our fisheries resources and to set a good example for our youth so please pick up after yourself and use the litter containers provided.
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Those are the basic rules and I’ve even left a few out. But the ministry, perhaps aware its fishing laws might tend to play havoc with the fun of fishing, even includes some instructions on that score in its fact sheet:
“Cameras, giggling and out-right displays of enjoyment are not only permitted, they are encouraged.”
They may be permitted. They may even be encouraged. But how in the world would they be possible?
It’s hard to giggle and try to remember items on a fact sheet at the same time.
©1991 Jim Hagarty
