Ocean Conservancy

Five Easy Ways for You to Improve Fishing in Your Backyard

In today’s media-driven world catch words like conservation and environmentalist often turn the hairs up on the back of mainstream anglers’ necks. The thought of more regulations coming down the throats of those everyday fishing folks is both frustrating and discouraging. We all want to improve the fishing in our communities, but the idea of more bureaucracy is not one the majority of anglers welcome with open arms.

One easy way to improve fishing in your backyard is to become more proactive in your community. Take full responsibility for your actions, instead of looking for someone else to blame. If you can succeed, things will only become easier.

Here are five other tips to improve your local fishing:

1)  Share your catch data with both governmental and non-governmental agencies to help create a clearer picture of the health of your local fisheries. Collecting accurate catch data is a critical component of sensible rules and regulations.

2)  Protect and increase accessibility in your backyard. This doesn’t necessarily mean the recreational fishing industry and the anglers supporting this industry should be protesting against every proposed park or sanctuary. What it does mean is we should have a fair and clear voice in the process of all land and water use decisions, and we should be paying better attention to enforcing the laws protecting the lands and waters supporting our regional marine resources. The marine resources we lose each year to hasty development is astonishing. Imagine the improvement in recreational fishing if we started reversing and correcting the destruction of our wetlands, springs, creeks and other keystone watershed components. It should be obvious if we restore water quality and protect critical habitat we would not need as many fishing rules, bag limits and regulations.

3)  Participate. Reward yourself by sharing your fishing knowledge and experiences with other anglers, kids, and families. The more you give back to fishing the more it will give back to you, and the more you will appreciate your backyard fishing spots.

4)  Never take for granted the value of a day’s fishing. A day on the water is better than most of the stress relievers we often fall back on nowadays. For more than a decade, I took people fishing two hundred-fifty days or more a year. What I learned from it is simple “Fishing’s good for you!”

5)  Pay attention. Get involved with groups working to protect the water and land in your community. Take responsibility in creating the fishing future you want to see and experience in your hometown waters.