Stop complaining and start commenting on fish stocking

If you’ve been complaining, or even just concerned, about fish stocking on your favorite lake or pond, then it’s time to step up and speak out. And even if you are perfectly satisfied with the species and numbers of fish stocked in your favorite places, you ought to monitor new stocking plans when they are proposed.

Now, you have that opportunity. And the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has just made it easier for you to do this.

Proposed stocking plans that have been peer reviewed and are ready for public scrutiny and comment are now available on DIF&W’s website. You will find them here:

http://www.maine.gov/ifw/fishing/reports/stocking/StockingProposals.htm

In addition to the agency’s plans to stock waters, you will also find information here if DIF&W is planning to stop stocking a water.

For years, the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine advocated to give anglers this opportunity. The legislature enacted one of SAM’s proposals, then repealed it at DIF&W’s request, and then, in 2009, the year before I retired from my position at SAM, a new version of the public notice requirement was enacted. Here is what the current law requires.

When the Bureau of Resource Management plans to stock an inland water for the first time or to stock a new fish species or permanently stop stocking a fish species that is currently being stocked in an inland water, the department shall notify the public as provided in this section and allow for public comments on the stocking plan prior to implementing that plan. The department shall include on its publicly accessible website, in a manner that is easily identifiable and accessible by the public, notice of fish stocking plans identified under this section and allow public comment within a reasonable period of time. The department shall also provide notice by e-mail to organizations and individuals who have requested such notice. The department shall provide notification as provided in this section at the same time the stocking plan becomes a Bureau of Resource Management proposal. This section does not apply to a private pond or a fishing program for children. [2009, c. 216, §1 (NEW).]

Mike Brown, DIF&W’s Fisheries Director, and his team deserve credit for taking this public notice requirement to a new level this year, and spreading the word about this opportunity. Please take advantage, check out the stocking places and plans, and let the agency know what you think, if you are familiar with any of the waters on the list.

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.