Aunty,

Maybe my glasses do need a bit of cleaning. I am not necessarily defending the regulation, merely looking at the motivation behind it. How about we delve into the hypothetical for just a moment? Let's say that the barbless hook regulation really is a politically motivated plan to keep the different factions of the sportfishing community at odds with each other. Again I ask you, what's the payoff? Is there a fear among commercial fishers that sporties may someday unite and effectively end commercial fishing altogether, so they've exerted their influence (politically and financially) on those who set wildlife policy in this state to create this particular regulation? I don't think that this is the case. We all know that sportfishers hold no political influence, therefore what do the commercials really have to fear? Mike Gilchrist provided the state's reasoning above. Personally, I'll take it at face value. As I said before, a lot of these regulations do not seem to have any logical basis, and WDFW definitely has a reputation of not always having the resource's best interest at heart. But in this case, I think a little too much is being read into it.