Giving Season for Fishing Season

’Tis the season for giving, and I’m writing this column on what they’re now calling “Giving Tuesday” — a Hallmark-ish day cooked up to encourage people who are waking up still drunk on the credit card-induced endorphins from Black Friday and Cyber Monday to give some of the money they are so freely throwing around to good causes.

It’s been a tough year for the fishing tackle industry, mostly because a lot of fish species are in not very good shape up and down the East Coast, so I definitely will encourage all of you fishermen to send your spouses, kids or parents out looking for gifts for you to your local tackle shop. And I’ll offer a little survey of some great last-minute gifts for fishermen in the December 18 edition.

This week, I’d like to, once again, in the spirit of this spending-spirit week, beg you to throw some financial support to the fishermen and scientists working to get our fisheries back on track, by making a donation to one of the public policy advocacy groups that wage the war so that the rest of us don’t have to (at least not on our own).

There are a lot of advocacy groups out there, but some are more focused on fisheries issues that are of particular importance to us here in the Northeast, and a few do it better than almost everyone else.

At the top of my list of deserving groups worthy of funding, again, are the American Saltwater Guides Association (saltwaterguidesassociation.com/donate/) and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (trcp.org/donate-now/). These two groups are not the largest, and are not always the loudest (although ASGA is indeed the loudest in some forums), but they both always seem to land the right side of the fights from a cautious conservationist viewpoint, and both are staffed with savvy crusaders who know how to speak truth to the bullshit that those who would just ride every fishery off the map will throw up like a plate of spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks.

The ASGA, in the last couple of years, has spearheaded some successful efforts to bake common-sense management into some of our most valuable and most threatened fisheries.

They have led the fight for striped bass in the Northeast and redfish in the Gulf Coast on behalf of fishermen whose only desire is to see fish stocks be as big as they possibly can be so that the fishing is good for everyone.

They have been the only ones asking recreational fishermen to turn the mirror on themselves when it comes to fish mortality and take steps to reduce the number of dead discards we’re responsible for — like eliminating treble hooks on casting plugs and handling fish more gently.

And they have almost single-handedly sparked the new effort to gain better understanding of albies by scientists from Massachusetts and the Carolinas.

The TRCP has done the same with bunker.

They are a national conservation organization that actually spends most of its time and resources in the West, on matters of public access, protecting public lands, and preserving environmental quality in our woodlands and rivers.

But the TRCP has been almost the lone voice in the Northeast demanding that the ecologically critical menhaden be protected from industrial harvests, which have little to no regard for stock status or the health of the dozens of other species that depend on them.

They have been embroiled in the daily campaign of bunker over-harvest in the Chesapeake Bay and off our shores — battling against Omega Protein, the company that runs bunker harvest here and in the Gulf of Mexico, with deep pockets and offering minimal financial benefit.

So, break out those virtual checkbooks, please, and make a difference this winter for fishing next spring.

Catch ’em up. See you out there.