Rules are Rules

Until they're changed.

The big news in Michigan trout fishing of late is the change to inland trout regulations. Several new categories of trout lakes and streams with different rules for each, more miles of gear restricted water (or that are gear restricted part of the year and all-tackle for the rest), more streams open year-round, increased size limits on a lot of kill waters. All this takes effect April 1st.

Until about 10 years ago, the regs were much simpler. Trout season was open from the last Saturday in April until September 30th except for a rivers or parts of rivers that got steelhead and salmon runs, you could fish with any gear you wanted except in flies only stretches on a handful of rivers. The limit was ten trout, then five, but the same on nearly every stream. Now you'll need to keep a copy of the regs in your vest and a lawyer on speed dial, at least if you plan to catch fish on bait and keep them, or fish after October.

A lot of people, or at least ones frequenting internet bulletin boards, are unhappy about the expansion of gear restrictions. Most gear restricted waters are artificials only rather than flies only, but it still irks people that they can't fish with bait wherever they choose. And they have a point. When fly-only waters were established, the rationale behind them was that since trout didn't swallow flies as deeply as they did bait, and since flies don't have multiple hooks as many lures do, released trout would stand a better chance of survival. Makes sense on its face, but recent studies show the difference of hooking mortality between the different methods is slight, and negated by the high natural mortality rate of stream trout.

Even so, the older assumptions seem to be writing the regulations--with the steadfast support of Trout Unlimited and other anglers' groups with membership dominated by fly fishermen. Thus, charges of elitism from garden hackle enthusiasts--possibly justified, seeing as a point some fly fishers offer in support gear restrictions is that on fly only waters, you don't see blue bait containers littering the banks and stuck in log jams.

My take? A resounding...meh. I fish with flies, rarely keep fish. I may do a little more extended season fishing, but not much. I don't see bait restrictions as the great civil rights issue of the 21st century, as some make it out to be, but I also don't see great value in most of the restrictions the new rules impose. I'll just keep fishing while the interest groups bloody one another.

But while I concede that science has pulled the rug out from under fly-only regulations, I would miss them if they went away, largely for sentimental reasons. When I first fished fly only waters, I felt like I was crossing a solemn boundary --take off thy boots, for that wherein thou wadeth is holy water. In doing so I sensed I was transforming myself from a guy who sometimes fished with flies into a fly fisherman. With that transformation, I felt, I incurred the responsibility to perfect my technique and so be worthy to fish these waters and stand with the generations of renowned anglers who came before. I took implicitly a pledge to spare every trout I caught, even off of fly waters. And whenever I went back to the hallowed fly only reaches of the Au Sable and Pere Marquette, I felt like I was returning to the keep of the life eternal that sustained the very best of mine--Antaeus to the earth.

Of course, I found out the experience on these waters wasn't as extraordinary as the lore of them would have it, and that even good fishing in large doses isn't enough to save your life. All the same, stepping into, say, the Au Sable at Burton's Landing and seeing the weathered wooden "QUALITY FISHING REGULATIONS IN EFFECT" sign gives me the feeling of returning home-or at least to A home, one of many that I need to feel I have a place on this earth. The symbol of a thing isn't the thing itself, though, and whatever turns regulations might take in the future, by this time I can find where I need to go without the signs.