Let them eat cake!
To the editor:
I know you will think I am making this up so go ahead and check it out for yourselves.
I refer to page 6 of the current Maine open water fishing laws. Free license provision. To wit: (1) Any Maine resident who is blind. (2) Any Maine resident who is a member of the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet or Micmac tribe. (3) Any Maine resident who is a veteran, has a service connected disability of 100 percent or has served in a combat zone and has a service connected disability of 70 percent or over. (4) Any Maine resident who is suffering from the loss, or loss of use of BOTH lower extremities. (5) Any mentally retarded person.
Note that the Maine resident suffering from the loss, or loss of use of both UPPER extremities is not included. Nor is a one-legged person. At first the Fish and Game Commission was going to include the uni-legged until some smart alecky Lt. Maj. pointed out that Captain Ahab was a pretty decent fisherman. Sorry guys-no free pass for you. Also note that with the exception of rule no. 5 these exemptions are for residents only.
If you are a blind, paraplegic WW II Medal of Honor winner from out of state you must pay $64 for a season pass or $23 for a three-day pass. So according to rule no. 2, Jim Thorpe cannot fish free (wrong tribe) but Charles Manson can and I, for one, don’t want to dangle my worm in any waters in the state that he might be fishing. And if the daughter of Nokomis were to come here from the shores of Gitchee Goomie, she would starve to death. Just you wait until Larry the Cable Guy hears about this!
I kind of figured that anybody who is allowed to use the “Handicapped Only” space at Tim Hortons should qualify too. But oh noooo. And the most conspicuous absentees from this list of harmless anglers is, of course, senior citizens over 70. We used to be on it until a 93-year-old man was found to have managed to glom four 6-inch trout out of the Prestile to have for his supper as a supplement to his surplus government cheese. Due to the high mercury levels, the poor old soul is now on display at the Ripley Museum in Atlantic City, New Jersey as the Human Thermometer.
If Commissioner Roland Martin were to watch the average geriatric angler standing in ice-water up to his liver while trying to attach an invisible piece of monofilament to a no. 22 black gnat through his trifocals, maybe he would relent and we’d be restored to the inept fisherman’s list. I mean-c’mon, we are not likely to fish for trout or salmon at the Grindstone or Ripogenus or the Big Black Rapids on the Saint John. We pose very little threat to the game fish resource. We can only do a service to the state by ridding its waters of chub and suckers and bullheads from the banks of a handicapped accessible pond or from a dock that we can get out on with our walkers. Even then we can only catch junk fish that an Igorot would refuse to eat.
Who thought up these rules. Marie Antoinette?!!
Nathan White
Portage Lake
