Barren Fork

[tjm]

 It's the only fair thing to do. Imposing  public use on private land is pure socialism.

[Al Agnew]

15 hours ago, tjm said:

 It's the only fair thing to do. Imposing  public use on private land is pure socialism.

It's not quite that simple.  The landowner on small streams owns everything but the water and fish and other wild organisms in the water.  The water, and those organisms in it, are owned by the state.  So where does the public's right to utilize those resources stop?  And it's a little bit different from, for instance, deer and other game animals on private land.  In order to reach those critters to hunt them, you have to venture onto that ground.  But it is certainly POSSIBLE to float a stream and never touch the bottom or bank, in order to reach the fish in it.  

As for wading streams where you DO have to touch the bottom to wade them, every state is different.  But we accept a LOT of public use of private land.  If you live in the city, you own the land under the sidewalk that goes across the front of your house, but the public has a right to use the sidewalk.  Some, not all, states, consider the rivers and streams to be such important resources that they grant the public the right to use them.  Montana, my other home state, for instance, has more permissive stream access laws than Missouri; in Montana, as long as you can legally get onto any stream that holds fish, you have the right to go anywhere you can reach on that stream in order to pursue those fish.  You can't get out of the stream and up atop a high bank, but as long as you stay within the stream or along the banks, you're perfectly within your rights to be on private property, because the state has decided that the trout which are a public resource are important enough to give the public access to them.

[trouty mouth]

9 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

You can't get out of the stream and up atop a high bank, but as long as you stay within the stream or along the banks, you're perfectly within your rights to be on private property, because the state has decided that the trout which are a public resource are important enough to give the public access to them.

I would love for Missouri to get on board with that.