The Outdoor Line Forum

I've lived in the puyallup area for close to twenty years, and have fished it longer than that and Im rather disgusted with what I saw this past sunday on the Puyallup River. I Took a walk down to a section of river below the mouth of the White River and I couldn't believe the amounts of trash! Beer cans, food wrappers, fishing line, fish guts, rotten eggs, bait containers, the smell was atrocious! That was just the parking area! The river looked like a DUMP! I was literally nauseous at how disgusting it was down there! The next high water and most of that mess is headn to the Puget Sound! You couldnt walk down a trail either without having to dodge human poo!
There needs to be some serious discussion about how to change things in this state! How do we change the mentality of the people using our resources? Fisherman and I mean "Real Fisherman" are gonna take a bad wrap for this! Most of the slobs on the river are people that pull the rods out of the closet for one month a year or every odd year at that! These people are not fisherman! They are simply harvesters, like vile locusts destroying everything in their path.
This disregard for the resource usually ends up in reduced access which hurts the real fishing community that fish year round on these rivers. My town of Orting on the Carbon River has taken measures to try to reduce this mayhem, even implementing a fee for fisherman parking in town. Now I hate to see that and don't want that precedent spread.
The Only answer I can see, and one I don't like very much is taking peoples toys away like little children! If you can't keep it clean we will shut it down! Close the river down during red hot fishing and see what happens. Now will that stop slobs from making a mess, maybe not, but it will make the average person start policing their fishing area a little bit? I think so! Speaking up when they see people trashing it. It may cause some confrontations but dammit this is AMERICA and sometimes thats how you get things done!
I fish in Canada quite a bit, and maybe we can learn from our little brother to the North. Some of the areas we fish during the salmon season are packed with fisherman every day for two months and I will be damned if you can find a single beer can or even a corky on the shoreline. Fisherman still have respect for their river and treat it well and they're not affraid to speak up when they see someone mistreating it!
As fisherman that want to enjoy the resource year round, and tired of seeing no trespassing signs or closed access gates we need to draw a line in the sand before the people in charge do, we all know that's never a good option!
I propose we have a clean the river weekend! We close the river for a weekend, and if I'm the wdfw and I don't see 2000 people down there cleaning the river than it doesn't get opened back up! Period!

I couldn’t agree with you more. In another post I wrote: "Ethical sportsmen are the consummate conservationists; otherwise there is no sport!"
The people who do this are not sportsmen. Today’s generation has no respect for anyone or anything but themselves. I spent 30 years in the Navy and have visited much of the world. What amazes me is the sense of entitlement many people in this country have. The idea of anything is ok for me, and screw you will ruin this great nation. I couldn't agree more that real sportsmen need to speak up and intervene when they see it happening. I know of some private property on the Stillaguamish when the owner lets people access the river to fish. A good friend of mine takes large trashes bag with him when he goes down there and picks up what he finds. The owner told him that it is only because of people like him that he doesn't shut it down.
Game on and En Garde!!!
L8R
Dan

I never dreamed that the situation has been that bad on the Puyallup. How sad.
The Skokomish nearly got shut down last season and fisherman have lost access on the Samish up north for the same reason.

We who know better have just got to coach our lesser informed brethren up! If you see someone making us all look like slobs, politely point out the error of their ways.

There is always the silent, trash bag approach too. Actions speak louder than words.

The problem we are facing too is that as fisherman we are always battling for our rights and our sliver of the pie, and public opinion of us as a whole plays a huge roll on issues like the initiative to ban gill nets in the Puget Sound for example. The average person that does not differentiate fisherman from slobs with fishing poles is not likely to side with us in our interests when they see the complete and total mistreatment of the resource.

I mentioned the trash problem on the Pooyallup and the Ditch on the show Saturday. Some of these idiots need to have their mother follow them around and clean up after them. I couldn't imagine leaving beer cans, lure packaging, and bait containers behind on the river bank every day...WTF OVER!

Further sign of the decline in responsibility with regards to the population as a whole.