Barren Fork

[tjm]

Not being a lawyer, my interpretation of trespass being "entering the property without the owners permission" would require the owner to be the complainant, no one else can know whether you have my permission or not. 

[fishinwrench]

11 minutes ago, tjm said:

Not being a lawyer, my interpretation of trespass being "entering the property without the owners permission" would require the owner to be the complainant, no one else can know whether you have my permission or not. 

Exactly.  

Or whether or not you even care who is on your property. 

I have a piece of property that people ride off-road vehicles on all the time.   I don't care.   I have bigger fish to fry than worrying about who's cutting ruts on a piece of land that I'm not even using.  🙄. Have at it !

[Al Agnew]

11 hours ago, ColdWaterFshr said:

Not ticked at me I hope.  Its a pretty little creek and I caught a single pretty little fish.  I don't think Barren Fork is in danger of becoming the next Bennett Springs due to my little trip report.  

If anything, I'd like to see the wild creeks like this get more attention.  Not that I want to see cars parked there the next time I go . . .  selfishly, I want it all for myself.  But isn't that a narrow view?  particularly when it comes to protecting such rare resource like this for the long term?  It deserves at least SOME attention.  

I get what you're saying about the pinheads though.  But suppose its a pinhead who owns property on this creek and starts trashing it?

People need to expand their imagination of where to go and and how to fish and what to target, and in the end I think you become a better steward of wherever you prefer to go and fish.  Outlet #3 at Taney, yeah, I've done that once.    What else is there?  How do you challenge yourself and seek out a new adventure?  Is that 100th stringer of stockers you landed as thrilling as the first stringer?

99.9% of the people who trout fish in this state will never bother with a place like Barren Fork, . . . . and thats okay.  I've driven by it so many times, I'm glad I finally pushed myself to go and explore it, even for just a few minutes.

No, not ticked at you, and I wasn't particularly speaking of Barren Fork.  After all, unlike all the little smallmouth creeks I fish, it is a somewhat publicized wild trout stream.  However, parts of it are certainly private land, so in a way I AM talking about it.  Please understand...wading size creeks flowing through private land ARE private.  We fish them only because the landowners don't mind (or possibly don't know that they can shut them down).  But the landowners most certainly CAN shut them down.  In my part of the state, I have lost access to several creek stretches just in the last five years, because people were flocking to the accesses (which are invariably bridge crossings) and trashing the place, and the landowner got fed up with it.  County officials in most counties are perfectly willing to side with the landowners when they complain about litter and vandalism and drunken, drugged up parties at the bridge crossing next to their land, and shut those places down even if the landowner doesn't.  A couple guys we all probably know are even making Youtube videos of fishing some of these small creeks, though mostly they don't name the creek.  Some HAVE named the creek they are fishing in the video.  I'm sorry, but it is the absolute height of stupidity to name small wading size creeks other than the ones MDC already publicizes.  It most certainly does attract people to those creeks, and like I said, a certain percentage of them are going to be pinheads.

I've heard the excuse dozens of times that "we need to bring more people to these places so that they will have more advocates to protect them."  Bullcrap.  If it's private land and CAN be shut down, it doesn't matter that a few more people actually care about it, the landowners have the right to shut it down and the more people visiting it, the more likely they are to exercise that right.  In today's political climate, the landowners pretty much have the right to do whatever the heck they please on their land anyway, and a few more advocates for protecting these small creeks aren't going to make a darned bit of difference.

[ColdWaterFshr]

1 hour ago, Al Agnew said:

the landowners pretty much have the right to do whatever the heck they please on their land anyway, and a few more advocates for protecting these small creeks aren't going to make a darned bit of difference.

Agree with most of what you said, but I hope you're wrong on this point.  

In a way, and I didn't always agree with this, I do see some value in the "Blue Ribbon" moniker these wild streams have been designated by MDC.  Blue ribbon may mean different things to different people, but it is a special designation and a line drawn in the sand with a purpose, . . . for protection and for future advocacy.  I don't think it would be terrible idea to carry over to a select few pristine stretches of wade-only smallmouth bass water.  At least the ones that aren't so secret any more.  

I think the pinhead landowner threats are a bigger threat to their longevity than the pinhead fishers that would target these places.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  A 16-18 inch SMB has quite a bit more meat than a 10 inch trout, and much more likely to be kept, regardless of any regulation in place.

[trouty mouth]

I wish we could get our state on board with stream access easements like they do in the Driftless/Wisconsin. If we had some sort of incentive or benefit to offer these landowners in return for stream access for public fishing I think that would help everyone out. 99.9% of the people wanting to get on these little streams aren't wanting to take fish -- most just pack out some beer cans and trash. 

Somebody get MDC on the phone and tell them what's up. 

[mic]

21 hours ago, tjm said:

I'm lost here, how were places destroyed by people not going there?

Trash and dumping, letting your cows walk all through it, etc.

[tjm]

4 hours ago, mic said:

Trash and dumping,

only happen when people go there.

[Al Agnew]

22 hours ago, ColdWaterFshr said:

Agree with most of what you said, but I hope you're wrong on this point.  

In a way, and I didn't always agree with this, I do see some value in the "Blue Ribbon" moniker these wild streams have been designated by MDC.  Blue ribbon may mean different things to different people, but it is a special designation and a line drawn in the sand with a purpose, . . . for protection and for future advocacy.  I don't think it would be terrible idea to carry over to a select few pristine stretches of wade-only smallmouth bass water.  At least the ones that aren't so secret any more.  

I think the pinhead landowner threats are a bigger threat to their longevity than the pinhead fishers that would target these places.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  A 16-18 inch SMB has quite a bit more meat than a 10 inch trout, and much more likely to be kept, regardless of any regulation in place.

I totally agree with you on the value of designating a stream a Blue Ribbon stretch.  Regulations have TWO purposes.  Supposedly, their main purpose is to protect the resource.  But a very real purpose, or at least an effect, of a special regulation is to guide public perception of the resource; if it's designated as "special", with more restrictive regulations, it tells people that there is something there of value, perhaps more valuable than other places or things.

And please understand, in the final analysis, I didn't say anything about keeping quiet about small creeks in order to protect their fisheries.  I'm saying to keep quiet about them, or we ALL stand to lose ACCESS to them.  While keeping quiet DOES in most cases keep the fishing better because fewer people are fishing it, the fishing comes and goes.  A creek gets publicized, a bunch of anglers show up and pound it, fishing declines, and pretty soon they go on to the next hot creek and the fishing recovers at least to some extent.  But the best fishing in the world doesn't much matter if you can't fish it.

Pinhead landowners are a whole different thing.  And they are a problem that can only be solved with education and incentives for them to treat the creeks better.  

[tjm]

Just about every pinhead landowner will sell up, if you want to save the stream that much buy it.

[Johnsfolly]

7 hours ago, tjm said:

Just about every pinhead landowner will sell up, if you want to save the stream that much buy it.

That seemed to be what Ted Turner was doing 15 or 20 yrs ago. It was my understanding that he bought up hundreds of not thousands of acres around western trout streams.