Somebody please take Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich to the woodshed and give him a swift kick in the pants. The “guv” has lost all sense of reality — and that’s what hurts this voter. I checked the box next to his name at the last election, praying that he would move the state away from the silly things that had become standard practice when Parris Glendening inhabited the governor’s mansion in Annapolis.
In our area of interest — hunting, fishing, boating, etc. — on more than one occasion Glendening showed he was little more than an animal rights activist who, some say, tried to staff the department in charge of regulating those activities with people who shared his views. For shame.
However, the bigger shame is that the new governor has betrayed the people who believed him to be a savior. Ehrlich appears to walk in lock-step with Maryland’s commercial fishing industry.
Not long after he came to office he allowed the temporary reduction of mandatory crab widths from 51/4 inches to 5 inches. Sensible conservationists know the 51/4-inch minimum would have saved millions of Chesapeake blue crabs and in the long run would have provided a solid future for crabbers and consumers alike. But, no, the governor and his minions succumbed to the shouts of the commercial lobby and reduced the minimums.
Then Ehrlich approved a man as assistant secretary of the Department of Natural Resources who might as well wear the trademark white boots of the watermen to his office. It is well known that Pete Jensen has a far higher regard for commercial fishermen than he does for the people who actually provide a huge slice of income for the state, the recreational anglers.
Now Ehrlich is rubbing salt into the wounds of the nearly 200,000 licensed recreational fishermen in Maryland. Late last week, he approved the naming of a new deputy director of fisheries at the DNR who, until his appointment, had been the first vice president of the Maryland Waterman’s Association. Kenny Keen is said to be a seafood market operator from Calvert County.
Here’s what really hurts: Who is giving advice to the governor? Who is telling the chief executive of the state that the less than 1,000 full-time commercial fishermen in the state are more important than the sport fishermen who outnumber the netters by something like 200-to-1?
How can a politician be so crass as to ignore the people who contribute so much to the state’s economy while supporting a handful of others who do their business primarily in cash to keep the tax man from knowing exactly how much money was made, and, as mostly small operators, employ few, thus adding little or nothing to the state’s tax base.
But that’s not all. Where are those much-ballyhooed Maryland sport fishing organizations? Where is the anger and disappointment they should be showing? Thousands of sport fishermen should be marching on Annapolis, maybe even demand a recall vote like the people of California did. Heck, any of the 160-odd candidates on the Left Coast could probably do better in Annapolis.
Brauer wins at Wheeler Lake — In nasty weather and rough waves, the old war horse of tournament fishermen, Missouri’s Denny Brauer, won the Bassmaster Southern Open at Alabama’s Wheeler Lake on Saturday. Brauer, 54, beat Alabama favorite Tim Horton, 30, by almost a full pound as he finished the three-day event with 333/4 pounds of live bass. Even though it wasn’t a record-setting catch — blame the poor conditions — it was good enough to earn Brauer $51,000 in cash and merchandise.
“We had kind of a weird situation when we had five inches of rain,” said Brauer, one of the most successful bass tournament anglers of all time. The 1998 Bassmasters Classic championship winner flipped a black or blue Strike King pro model 1/2-ounce jig of his own design. He also used a new lure, the Denny Brauer Strike King Chunk, which hasn’t been made available yet to the national tackle market.
• Look for Gene Mueller’s Outdoors column every Sunday and Wednesday and his Fishing Report every Thursday, only in The Washington Times. E-mail: gmueller@washington times.com.
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