Are you trespassing?

[Terry Beeson]

Al,

Excellent explanation...

[gonefishin]

So if touching the bottom of a creek or lake is trespassing then it would follow that wade fishing is trespassing. There is the precedence to outlaw shuffling. Of course it would also outlaw most wading but hey a person can't have it all.

I don't see how a land grant from the king of england can be enforced in our court system. Once the US kicked England out the grants were worthless but, then what can be expected out of a bunch of lawyers.

Anyway I see a lot of holes in your argument but thats what makes a horse race.

[brownieman]

Hey Al,

Did your homework on that one, huh

It will always be a "Gray Area" concerning who's in the right...

[gonefishin]

One of the many colors of gray.

[Al Agnew]

I've researched this topic pretty extensively at times. The law doesn't always make sense, but that's the way it is. I'm not arguing, Gone...just telling the facts. Touching the bottom of a floatable stream isn't trespassing--even though you're touching private "land"--because courts have SAID it isn't, plain and simple. And I agree with you completely on the king of England land grants--but unfortunately the Virginia Supreme Court DOESN'T, and at this point theirs is the opinion that matters.

[jcoberley]

Yeh well I say DOWN WITH THE KING!!!!

[Crippled Caddis]

Al wrote:

<You see, land grants given by the king of England before the United States came into being gave the landowners along these rivers the exclusive fishing rights, and unbelievably, recent court cases have upheld those grants.>

As they have in the case of Spanish land grants in the SW that gives ALL rights to the streams to the landowner so long as the property remains in the same family. Not at all unusual as proprety rights are commonly 'grandfathered'.

[Terry Beeson]

Cun-froozed yet, CMAC? I am...

[CMAC]

YEP!

I read a post yesterday somewhere else they were talking about fishing local accesses. This individual decided not to put in a low water access because the landowner had posted no-tresspassing signs on both sides of the river.

[hank franklin]

I think private property rights on streams will be the subject of a major showdown in the courts in the next 10-15 years or so. The public's interest in water quality, and the government's increasing assertion of authority to regulate that, is on a collision course with the property owner's interest in "peaceful enjoyment."

My own feeling is that "right of passage" in Missouri is well-established on the floatable sections of streams, and is not in jeopardy. "Right of passage" on the less-floatable stream sections is not well-established and would be in jeopardy, in my opinion.

The conflict will be in the definition of "floatable," and I really don't see the courts definitively resolving that issue. Is someone going to go out on the map and draw lines? I don't think so. There will always be a degree of subjectivity in that, similar to the situation we have now.

I do believe a more exacting standard will be set up to regulate and protect watersheds. The existing federal law and regulations derived from it are unclear and haphazardly administered and the situation is begging for challenge in the courts. There will be a big fight over that in the coming years, and I do believe the government, i.e the "public" will ultimately win, though not without bearing an increased cost. Clean water of the future will not be cheap.

We're a long way from the resolution of that issue however. In the meantime it will be up to the sportsmen in the field, as well as the organized groups, to promote responsible stream use. I believe most stream landowners understand the right of passage tradition in Missouri and in fact recognize and support it. But it only takes a few reckless trespasses, littering, property destruction etc. for that landowner to change his mind.