CASPER, Wyo. (AP)
Tim Wade calls it combat fishing.
It occurs not only when too many anglers flood Wyoming’s waters but also when too many nonpermitted guides float the same streams.
“If you have everybody guiding, the resource is going to be stressed at some point,” he said. “I’m trying to get oversight. I’m trying to get regulations and get these permits to mean something.”
Wade, owner of Tim Wade’s North Fork Anglers fly-fishing and guide shop in Cody, has been taking people fishing on Wyoming rivers for decades. He’s watched the number of guides increase exponentially across the state, especially on rivers swarming with big fish, such as the Big Horn near Thermopolis and the North Platte near Casper.
He’s mostly seen an increase in the number of unpermitted guides, often other states.
Wyoming, unlike many other Western states, doesn’t license fishing guides but relies on federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service for permits.
Fishing outfitters such as Wade think there should be one entity in Wyoming that overseas all fishing guides, just as the Board of Outfitters and Professional Guides handles hunting businesses. At minimum, he says, federal agencies should do a better job of enforcing the permits they distribute.
Even though licensing all guides seems like an easy solution, other outfitters and state agencies say requiring one more permit may have the potential for unforeseen consequences like higher costs and more restrictions.
H H H
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department permitted all of its hunting and fishing guides and outfitters until 1989, when the Legislature created the Board of Outfitters and Professional Guides to govern only hunting outfitters. That left no one overseeing fishing guides.
Fishing guides need permits only if they’re using federal or state trust land. That means as long as commercial guides use boat ramps owned or leased by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, for example, and don’t anchor or go to shore on any land in between, they’re technically legal.
The Big Horn River near Thermopolis has several of these more unregulated boat ramps, providing even less oversight of guides, said Jeramie Prine, owner and head guide of Dunoir Fishing Adventures out of Lander.
And it’s starting to take its toll, he said.
Prine has played by the rules, he said. He bought his BLM permit and trains his guides in ethics and first aid. He wants other guides to have to follow the same rules.
“Wyoming is one of the few states where there is zero regulation,” he said. “Any fishing guide, from Mongolia to China to wherever, can come to Wyoming, bring clients, and as long as they’re on a Wyoming easement, they don’t have to do anything.”
The number of guides is increasing. Prine said he counted at least five boats from out-of-state, unpermitted guides on the Big Horn River on a recent weekend.
The North Platte River near Casper has seen even more of an increase. Guided trips on the North Platte started with one shop that opened in 1998 at Alcova.
Through marketing and the Internet, the number exploded to at least 36 guide services now offering fishing trips on the Gray Reef section of the river, according to information collected by Al Conder, Casper area regional fisheries supervisor.
Blake Jackson, head guide for the Ugly Bug Fly Shop in Casper, thinks that at some point there could be too many guides on the river. If numbers increase, that will strain the fishery, he said. But he doesn’t know what the answer could be.
“I am against people illegally guiding. If you’re going to use a public resource for commercial gain, you should have a permit and support that resource,” he said. “But do we really want to pay more fees, and the Game and Fish Department, which is already understaffed and underfunded, have to regulate them? We would be supporting how many rangers we thought we needed to have, and that would drive up the price of trips.”
He also doesn’t want to see a finite number of guiding licenses create a situation where out-of-state guides could be permitted at the expense of up-and-coming local guides.
Hunting outfitters already pay $600 to belong to the state board, said Jane Flagg, the board’s administrator. Adding policing and paperwork to monitor fishing guides would require even higher fees.
Game and Fish faces a similar dilemma, said Dirk Miller, assistant fisheries chief for the department.
“There would be a sizeable impact to the agency,” Miller said. “We haven’t done any kind of analysis, but our people all have full plates right now.”
At a recent meeting, the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee discussed the possibility of licensing fishing guides but decided to drop the issue, said Sen. Bruce Burns, R-Sheridan.
“We looked at the idea of inserting state government into that, and the problems just didn’t seem big enough to get people involved in,” Burns said.
Many of the issues with pirate guides – what Jackson calls guides without any permits – could be fixed if BLM policed more of its land, he said.
Businesses with BLM permits pay 3 percent of their gross income for the right to commercially guide on the federal land. Right now, the money goes back to restoration, boat ramp improvements and other land projects, said Eve Skillman, outdoor recreation planner for the Casper BLM office.
The office has one ranger who covers four counties, including the North Platte. She hopes to be able to start using some of the permit money to pay for a seasonal ranger to float the section of river where most people guide, Skillman said.
Better policing would help on the Big Horn, but Prine still would like to see a statewide governing license board.
“It’s personally affecting my business. When you have two guides in front of you and they have no permits, it’s a loophole,” he said. “People know it’s unregulated, and they take advantage of it.”
