Should anglers be required to leave a small piece of the fish skin on a filet when using a public fish cleaning station?
That’s the question the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s Law Enforcement Committee is evaluating after receiving comments the rule is not necessary or convenient.
During Tuesday’s meeting Dan Pastore, the agency's vice president commissioner from Erie, shared his opinions on the practice and why it’s more of an inconvenience than something that protects the resource.
“The angler position on this has really been opposed to it. This is my district, I interact with anglers pretty much every day. I’ve been to the cleaning stations, I’ve cleaned fish at the cleaning stations, I get a lot of feedback from anglers here about what’s happening in this area and what I really hear is disappointment that we’ve imposed this requirement,” Pastore said. “They can’t effectively fully clean their fish like they used to be able to.”
The Fish and Boat Commission has three public fish cleaning stations in Erie including at the Lampe Marina, North East Marina and Walnut Creek Marina. They were built with funds generated by anglers who purchased Lake Erie permits with their fishing licenses.
Anglers who are processing their fish at one of these stations are required to leave at least a 2-inch by 2-inch piece of fish skin on filets to help law enforcement officials know the species of fish the person has in their possession.
“The anglers were very appreciative; loved the cleaning stations. They are used very extensively. At the time we opened them there was no requirement that a piece of skin be left on the fish,” Pastore said. “In July of 2022, we implemented this new regulation to require this piece of skin. At the time I was skeptical of why this was really necessary but willing to give it a try and expressed at the time that I would like to revisit it once we had an opportunity to see how it actually works in practice.”
He recently has asked anglers to write letters expressing their opinion on the requirement and 16 people, including the Pa. Steelhead Association and S.O.N.S. of Lake Erie, voiced their opposition. He also received comments from the Erie PA Charter Boat Association that the organization opposed the requirement.
The committee also received three public comments before the meeting from anglers regarding leaving skin on the filets. “All three comments are not supportive of keeping that 2-inch by 2-inch requirement,” Renae Kluk Kiehl, chief counsel for the agency, told the committee.
Pastore shared his rationale for asking the committee to look into removing the requirement.
“It really defeats the purpose and the intent of the cleaning stations. There was no ambiguity when we did this originally. We put the stations in so they could fully clean their fish. It was a convenience to anglers. We were giving the anglers what they asked for, what they paid for. They paid for these stations from their permit funds and we basically took part of that benefit away and said you can’t fully clean your fish here anymore. So we undermined the original intent of it which was to let you fully clean your fish,” he said.
Pastore said the agency didn’t lose any enforcement methods by adding the station and he feels they actually helped to protect the resource. He said the officers can patrol the marinas and check boats when they dock to see what fish were caught and if the anglers had their proper licenses.
“It’s very effective,” he said about the boats only having one way out. “You can see right there how many fish are in the cooler, check the size, look at people’s licenses. We’ve had that ability and still have that today,” Pastore said.
Now officers can also visit the cleaning stations to see what fish people have. Anglers are cleaning a variety of fish including steelhead, walleye, perch and panfish.
“We created a brand new penalty that never existed before. It’s essentially a new potential point of friction between our WCOs (waterways conservation officers) and the anglers that never existed before,” Pastore said about the skin regulation.
If an angler chooses to filet their fish somewhere other than the public cleaning station, away from the waterway, such as at their camp, they don’t need to leave the piece of skin on the meat. Pastore said charter captains can fully process fish on their boats, but if they use a cleaning station they have to leave a piece of skin on the filets.
“If I’m a charter captain, are we saying as long as I clean my fish on my boat I don’t have to do it, but if I go to the cleaning station where it would be more convenient, now I do have to do it,” he said.
Pastore knows a captain who cleans his fish and then takes the remaining parts of the fish to the cleaning stations to dispose of them to avoid the regulation.
“That’s kind of the conundrum we have created by requiring that,” he said.
Pastore also questioned if people who caught too many fish or kept ones that are under the minimum size limit would actually use a public cleaning station and risk being caught.
“People would do things that surprise you, but being practical about this. If I’m intentionally catching a lot of fish over the limit, or I’m catching undersized fish and I know it, do you really think I’m going to pull up to the public cleaning station instead of just taking my fish somewhere else and cleaning them? So there’s no real deterrent value here. You can circumvent this rule by not cleaning them at the cleaning station,” he said.
The Law Enforcement Committee has mixed feelings about the regulation. Commissioner John Mahn Jr. from Washington County believes the requirement serves a purpose in protecting the resource from people catching too many fish or keeping ones that are too small.
“Everything I heard related to convenience over protection. I think we all agree this rule was put in place to protect the resource. Everybody is in favor of protecting the resource until it becomes inconvenient, or until it costs them some money. I didn’t hear anything that changed my mind that this is anything other than convenience over protection. Sometimes it’s going to hurt,” Mahn said.
He believes the signs pointing out the requirement help to keep anglers honest about what fish they are harvesting.
“I think the signs are there to enforce the rule when there are no WCOs around and if it’s posted, 80 to 90% of the people that use the cleaning station will abide by the rules,” he said.
Mahn said anglers who fish in Erie and have a long drive home to another part of the state appreciate the ability to clean their fish with this requirement before they leave one of these marinas.
“This 2-by-2 piece of skin doesn’t seem that important to me,” he said. “I can live with that two-inch piece of skin.”
Some anglers can make a flap with that small piece of skin that is easily pulled off when the person gets home.
Jeff Sabo, director of the Bureau of Law enforcement, said it’s common for anglers to use a fish cleaning station and then go to another area to fish.
“If one of our officers shows up and says, ‘Hey may we check your creel or cooler?’ and the individual has fish on a stringer, the skin is there. But if we look in the cooler and there are six, eight, 10 filets there with no skin on and it’s a combination of walleye and perch, it’s difficult for our officers to tell the difference between the meat on those species, what are they supposed to do? ” he said.
Don Anderson, chairman of the committee and commissioner from Somerset County, decided to have the WCOs in Erie interviewed by Sabo about the requirement and the committee will discuss his findings at its next meeting.
“I would like to hear from them and how they feel about this, especially the officers up in the Northwest that would be working in the Erie area,” Anderson said.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him atbwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook@whipkeyoutdoors.
Most Popular
Comments / 0