Ok, I 've calmed down now.... not! Let me begin this by saying I am sure none of those that visit this site are guilty of this, but it is a problem and it is real.

Last Saturday I hooked up with a fellow fly fisher to take him to one of my secret spots. This place is fished by few and it can produce some very nice Steelhead. You have to work to get there, but let me tell you it is worth it. This water just makes you smile.

Anyway, we get up and head out at 4 am, get to the river just after dawn, and hike on in. When you first see the river you are looking down onto a beautiful bowl hole with a creek flowing in. This hole sits at the top of a long up hill no holding water climb for any fish moving up stream.....perfect.

Once we got down on the gravel bar my euphoria turned to rage. I could not believe my eyes. Plunking sticks, lots of them. A stick fire still smoldering, beer cans everywhere, Doritos strune about, bait containers, and sand shrimp.....SAND SHRIMP! This water is quality water. Single barbless hook no bait water.

Because of the time of our arrival and the coaled fire it was easy to figure out there were poachers in there during the night. Not only were they poaching but they were pigs on top of it. We spent 45 minutes picking everything up as we always carry a garbage bags to pack litter out and then we fished.

I could not let this go as it gnawed at me all day. It was as if someone had broken into my house. I began to think about how this can be stopped, the poachers, snaggers, and the litterbugs. This is what I came up with.

When caught, the penalty must be punitive. It must be more then a fine and/or lose of gear. The way I see it, most guys that do these things invest more dollars in beer then they do in equipment. So get caught, loose your hunting and fishing privilages for life, forever, period. Get caught again with no licsense, go to jail, at least a year during which time you had to pick up trash every where it existed.

This may seem harsh, but obviously what is happening now is not working. We need to cull these people, and I use the term loosely, out of the gene pool because they will just poach and trash it. All it would take is a few guys to suffer this wrath and their buddies in crime and it is a crime, might think twice about
committing the same crime. I guess this is predicated on the idea that they can think and judging from their behavior this fact is yet to be proved.

Well that is just my opinion. What do you think will stop these idiots?