March 11, 2008 - Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife

Weekly Fishing Report - From Our Biologists

The Ever-Changing Lawbook

How do you best manage fish populations?

That’s easy. Manage people! This may seem to be odd logic but since the last Ice Age fish have been taking care of themselves quite nicely. Then humans came along. We fish, modify habitat, and perform a number of other activities that directly and indirectly impact fish populations. As my college fisheries professor Dr. Ringler used to say, “Fisheries management is 98 percent dealing with people and two percent dealing with fish.”

For the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s Fisheries Division, the most direct method we have of managing the behavior of anglers is through the rules and regulations in our lawbooks. Like most other things, the easier a regulation is to understand the more useful it is. That is why over the last three years the Fisheries Division slowly has been making changes to the fishing lawbooks. Some of the recent changes include:

• Consolidation of bass regulations from 25 different regulation categories to five categories;
• Consolidation of lake trout regulations from 30 to 7 categories;
• Consolidation of brook trout regulations from 25 to 8 categories;
• Consolidation of landlocked salmon regulations from 16 to 8 categories;
• Combining the two extended fishing season, S-23 (Oct. 1-31) and S-24 (Oct. 1-Nov. 30) into one extended season from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. This allows for expanded fishing opportunities on more than 2,000 waters located throughout the state;
• Modifying the layout to improve readability and highlight new regulation changes.

At this moment some folks probably are throwing their hands in the air yelling, “Maine fishing law books are too complex! They should be more like a ‘fill-in-your-favorite-state’ variety – one book for any state!” Without a doubt Maine’s fishing lawbooks include a lot of special regulations and for good reason. There are more than 6,000 lakes and ponds and 32,000 miles of rivers and streams in the state. The Fisheries Division staff spends the majority of their time in the field studying waters and analyzing data that guides our management decisions. As our understanding of fish populations within individual water bodies grows, so does the need to tailor regulations to meet specific performance goals. These goals can range from providing high catch rates to producing trophy-sized fish.

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KeepMEcurrent.com, ME - 3-15-08

By Bill Woodward Fishery biologist

• Having observed many anglers over the years using different angling techniques to catch fish through the ice, I sometimes wonder what they will think of next in their pursuit of landing a trophy. Each geographic area of the United States has its own contribution to the variety of tackle used to ice fish. In the state of Maine, I have seen several unique ice fishing implements. Here are some examples. 
• On some Maine waters, I have observed what resembles a school of wooden fish scattered on the surface of the ice. The wooden fish are used to indicate to the angler whether a fish is on or not. The familiar balanced tip-up works on a similar principle, with this trap there is a fish on your line when the tail of the wooden fish is up. Furthermore, on this trap, the reel is above the water.
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