Welcome to almost-spring, fellow FishTalkers! Though standing on frozen lakes and rivers while punching holes through the ice and shivering for hours on end was an awful lot of fun, I can’t say I’m sorry to see a new fishing season getting ready to crank up. The perch run is about to bust loose, pre-season stripers are going to become more and more active, and before you know it we’ll have warm-weather species like Spanish mackerel swimming in the bay while yellowfin tuna go running up the coast. We may celebrate turkey day in November, but March is definitely a time for anglers to be giving thanks.
One thing I’m thankful for, which we should all be thankful for and surely don’t express often enough, is the Maryland NRP. I don’t mean to dis Delaware’s DNREC nor Virginia’s VDGIF, but truth be told, even though both have checked me and those encounters have been amicable, I haven’t had enough experience with them through the years to make any solid judgments. The Maryland NRP, however, has checked me more times than I can count – several dozen times while fishing, for sure, plus a few times while crabbing, hunting, clamming, and oyster tonging. In all those encounters I’ve only had one single negative experience, maybe 25 years ago when I felt an officer pushed the line between checking me and hassling me. Even the time I was actually cited (for failure to display registration; I forgot to put the sticker on my boat), the officers were polite and friendly.
This topic came to mind because a friend recently complained he had been “harassed” by an officer last summer, who checked his boat bow to stern, “wasting his time and ruining his day.” But decades of sharing the water with these people runs counter to that claim. I’ve had an NRP officer in Ocean City board me in the inlet and allow us to continue on towards the marina, while officer number two followed behind in the Whaler, so as to not hold us up. I’ve had NRP officers in the Upper Bay share info about the hot bite I was missing just a few miles away. I’ve had NRP officers in the Middle Bay help me locate the boarders of a public oyster bar so I wouldn’t accidentally encroach on leased bottom. And I’ve had NRP officers in the Lower Bay give me a warning instead of a ticket when I put the wrong size numbers on my boat.
I know there are anglers out there – some who are good folks – who have an issue with our NRP. But in my experience, if there’s a problem with a Maryland NRP officer there’s a reason for it and the officer is generally not at fault. Some people seem to think they “deserve a break” when they have a short fish in the cooler (they don’t), or that they shouldn’t get a second ticket when, after giving the officer an attitude, they get checked head-to-toe and something like expired flares turn up (they should). And finally, let’s not forget that when a boat is sinking, on fire, or in danger of any sort, these are among the first people who are going to firewall the throttles – seas-be-damned – to come to your assistance.
I suspect that those who might rant about the NRP probably haven’t spent much time fishing in Florida, where the marine patrol tends to be significantly less courteous and professional. I suspect they’ve never had to call the NRP or USCG for emergency assistance, because once you’re in a situation where that becomes necessary you gain a completely different outlook on watercops. And I suspect that age and experience will change their views – as I tried to explain to my “harassed” friend, who as it turned out had no throw-cushion aboard, which turned a quick PFD check into a full-blown inspection.
In the meantime, NRP officers and support staff, we at FishTalk would like you to know that 99.9 percent of us are thankful for the work you do. But if you could speed up the perch run and get those stripers snapping sooner, we’d be even more thankful.