Published: January 12, 2008 09:12 pm         

Trout $$$$$ choice

In case you weren’t paying attention this past summer, the price of a West Virginia nonresident fishing license became a better deal for residents of Maryland.

No, West Virginia didn’t reduce the amount that Marylanders have to pay. It’s the other way around. Maryland, beginning this past summer, pretty much doubled the amount that its residents have to cough up to fish in what may be inappropriately called the Free State.

The Maryland resident fishing license increased from $10.50 to $20.50. The trout stamp remains at $5.

A nonresident angler in West Virginia will pay $35 for the license, $15 for the trout stamp, $12 for the law enforcement stamp and $2 for the national forest stamp for a total of $64.

Obviously, Maryland can now sell half the licenses it has in the past and still make the same amount of revenue. The Inland Fisheries Division needs the money because it has to buy a lot of trout from private hatcheries because Bear Creek Trout Rearing Station won’t have any adult fish this year as it recovers from an operation to cleanse it of whirling disease spores. Also closed because of the disease are the former rearing stations at Mettiki Coal and Jennings Randolph Dam.

Sure, it costs a Marylander more to fish in West Virginia, so at that point you begin to compare the products offered by the two states when it comes to put-and-take fisheries. Maryland destroyed about 160,000 adult trout because of the existence of whirling disease. Climbing out of that hole is not an easy task.

If you’ve been reading the Times-News, you have seen that West Virginia has already begun stocking trout. The Smoke Hole and Franklin sections of the South Branch of the Potomac have already been visited by hatchery trucks. Ditto for the Blackwater and Lost rivers. Trout season is open all year long in the Mountain State. Even though West Virginia is much bigger, it has substantially fewer special regulations than Maryland, where fishermen need to keep the phone number of their lawyers on the speed dial function of their cell phones.

Mike Griffith, in December, during the last meeting he attended as president of the Allegany-Garrett Sportsmen’s Association, expressed his dismay over the state of the trout stocking program in Maryland and the increase in the fishing license. “You pay more to get less,” Griffith said. New President Bill Wilhelm said a letter outlining AGSA’s disappointment will be sent to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

For years, it was illegal for a Maryland resident, whose only license was a nonresident West Virginia issue, to fish in the North Branch of the Potomac River. In May of 2007 that changed when the Maryland Attorney General’s Office told the fisheries agency that such a stance was not legal. Point is, those of you Marylanders who don’t want to give up fishing the Barnum area of the North Branch don’t have to purchase a Maryland license to be legal as long as you have a nonresident West Virginia license. Of course, if you want to fish the Savage River drainage with artificial flies, you will still need one.

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.