Stimulus for Fishermen

Soon President Obama will plan to sign the much debated trillion dollar stimulus passage and many in the fishing world on the west coast can get excited. The plan has a proposed $45 million dollar package to remove fish barriers, in the form of dams, to allow salmon and steelhead trout to migrate up rivers and spawn uninterrupted as they once did.

Currently the west coast salmon fishery is shut down, losing $100 million annually. The fishing is not allowed because of the abysmal salmon population as a direct result of the dams in place on those western rivers they migrate up to lay their eggs.

The stimulus plan in the aspect allows those fish to return to where hey once thrived during the spawning season providing anglers opportunities to fish for huge numbers of migrating salmon and steelhead.

When the fish are caught by anglers and kept, many people pay top dollar for the fish for uses like food and fertilizer for crops. The way in which it directly affects us anglers is by giving us a once revered fishing destination a face lift. There will most definitely be a resurgence in guides and fly shops in those areas as well as all types of businesses needed to support fisherman traveling to that particular river to fish.

Bob "Bamboo Bob" Clay said, "If you want to have the wonderful resource around forever then drastic measures must be done. Stocking farm raised stealhead disrupts the genetic code of the wild fish, so that is not the answer. The only answer is by developing the wild stock of fish to a sustainable level and removing certain dams does that."

All of these areas will be stimulated by the new proposed bill and will stand to see good salmon production in the future as a result keeping in mind commercial and recreational fisherman obey daily bag limits and regulations on how many fish are legally harvested.