First off I would like to thank Tony for taking three hours of his time and meeting with us. Also a shout out to Dales for setting this all up!
As most of you know, the purpose of this meeting was to get educated about the problems we are facing and come up with ways that we can help. I am not going to go into all the rules, regs, and how the many agency's come up with these rules (there are more acronyms for these groups than letters in a Campbell's can of alphabet soup
).
I will tell you what I personally came out of the meeting with. WE NEED MONEY AND REPRESENTATION! I will be the first to admit that I have never joined the RFA, but that will change tomorrow! They are the only group with a full time Washington lobbyist and that is what we need! We also need donations to the SSFFF. I know this has been discussed in the past and people want to know where the money is going. The money is being VERY well spent, we all agreed that the fund must start letting people know, in detail, what the money is being spent on. I think in the near future you will be able to see just how well the money is spent. we have some volunteers who will be working to update the funds website on a regular basis to keep everyone in the loop as to how the money is spent. Trust me WE NEED MORE! last year when figuring out how much to donate to the SSFFF, I figured it was well worth a day of fishing to try and insure future fishing for my kids. So I donated $75.00 which is my average cost to fish for a day on a party boat. If everyone would donate one day of fishing the fund would benefit greatly and continue to do the work that NEEDS to be done.
As far as protests, petitions, and local politicians I think I have been barking up the wrong tree. It was explained to me that most of the local politicians usually side with the fishermen, so why preach to the choir with a local protest. The problem is in the nations capital (shocker)! The RFA, as mentioned earlier, is the only recreational fishing lobbyist in Washington. WE MUST support them. You may not agree with everything they do, but you must look at the big picture, they are trying to help us. I say let us help them, help us. That means money by any means necessary! Benefit trips, donations, membership drives, bake sales and whatever else we can think of! That includes donating as much as you can to the SSFFF!
We had eight very dedicated people at this meeting and plan to do it again with a much larger group of people, more on that later. In the meantime thanks to the guys who took the time today to try and help all of us. The above was my take of the meeting, I look forward to what the others thought.
Once again thanks to T.B. and the others who were there.
P.S. I don't know how Tony sleeps at night with all those acronyms running around in his head
