From the Boathouse: Simple solution to fishing license decline
Ahoy from the Big Apple!
This week, my show manager Brenda Barnes and I are 2,123 nautical miles east of Southern California while attending the radio industry’s Talkers New York 2015 gathering at the India House Club in New York City’s financial district.
We like to attend this annual event where the movers and shakers of talk radio meet to discuss what is happening in the broadcast world, and to socialize with management and advertising executives, broadcast consultants and other talk show hosts.
We could have changed course and navigated 3,388 nautical miles to the north for a visit with Santa Claus at the North Pole, however, we would have missed the breakfast with Sean Hannity. After the event concludes for another year, we are planning to change from the Andaz Wall Street hotel to the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Our plans are to visit Times Square, Central Park and catch a Broadway show.
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Fishing and the law
Closer to home and an important topic that I recently mentioned in my columns is the decline of fishing in California and the decline in fishing licenses. On June 4, the California Sportfishing Stimulus Act of 2015, Senate Bill 345, was passed by the State Senate. Now, legislation is headed for the State Assembly but a major provision is missing from the bill.
The Senate Appropriations Committee amended the bill to remove the key provision championed by anglers that would change California’s calendar-based fishing license to a license which expires 12 months from the date of purchase.
Efforts are underway in the State Assembly to reinstate the language.
“Establishing a 12-month fishing license is critical to reforming a costly fishing license program that has contributed to an unprecedented decline in fishing participation,” said Marko Mlikotin, California Sportsfishing League’s executive director on the Outdoor Wire website. “It is our hope that California will follow the lead of other states that found that a 12-month fishing license program can lead to greater fishing license sales and state revenue.”
Why is it so difficult to simply make the license expiration date conform with other state issued licenses like your driver’s license?
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Boating news of the week
Longtime Costa Mesa resident Jeff Diercksmeier is this year’s Commodore of the Lake Arrowhead Yacht Club, located 80 miles away in the San Bernardino Mountains. A good number of residents from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are members of the club, and a few times as I glanced around the club house the faces I saw would make one think that they were at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.
Diercksmeier began at the Lake Arrowhead Yacht Club as a dock boy at the ripe age of 13, He still says that was the best job ever.
His timing for becoming commodore in 2015 is significant as his father, Charles F. “Dirk” Diercksmeier, was the club’s commodore exactly four decades earlier in 1975. Dirk first visited the lake in 1936 with his uncle Thomas F. Hamilton who was commodore in 1939. Dirk and his wife Sara honeymooned at Lake Arrowhead in the early ‘50s and joined the yacht club in the early ‘60s.
What a great history and legacy for a yacht club that is located a mile high from sea level. I do have to tip my captain’s hat to Jeff’s wife, Jennifer, who is his navigator and teammate.
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I’ll be in touch
I will be racing again this summer season onboard a C Scow sailboat with teammates Kurt Zimmerman, boat owner, and Annie Keller.
It is starting off to be an exciting summer, so I will let you know about our sailing races from time to time and my final Autocross car race of the season on the Fourth of July weekend with the Edge Motorworks Team at Crow’s Landing.
As always, just keep an eye to the weather for any changes. Please be boat smart and boat safe. Lastly, please boat responsibly and look behind you before you turn the wheel at the helm.
The original boating program, “Boathouse TV & Radio Shows,” has stretched from coast to coast for more than two decades. See the details at https://www.boathousetv.com, https://www.facebook.com/boathouseradio and https://www.twitter.com/boathouseradio.
Safe Voyages!
MIKE WHITEHEAD is a boating columnist for the Huntington Beach Independent. Send marine-related thoughts and story suggestions to [email protected] or go to https://www.boathousetv.com.