NYS DEC comes to their senses.

The trout here in the northern ADKs are carnivorous as this picture shows. The minnow Rich used is almost as big as the trout but he still took it on. It is great to see so many small wild fish and every stream here has them in them. This is great when training young fishermen, nothing spurs them on like success. The reason for this post is that the DEC is going to relax the restrictive bait laws so that once again you will be able to pick and transport live minnows again. There will still be restrictions but the indication is that they are reaching a balance on protecting fish from VHS yet realizing that fishermen should not be penalized for something they had nothing to do with. The adjusted laws will probably not go into affect till this fall but at least there is hope. These laws have crippled the bait business and fishermen using live bait. This winter I spoke to fishermen that were driving 50 miles, round trip, to buy bait because most small bait shops have been forced out of business. At $4 gas prices the bait was costing about 40 cents a minnow. Great for the oil companies bad for the fishermen. More information is forthcoming on the DEC website and I will post here when it comes out. Bye for now!!