feburary 15 - 16 are free fishing days in michigan, no licence is needed to fish on these days, although you still must abide by all michigans fishing rules and regulations.
this program was actualy started of by yours truly Dave T. Clown 4 years ago while visiting with the michigan house senent in lansing.
please be safe dress worm and catch a fish for dinner and let a fish go for another day.
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Congrats Dave! What is entailed in pulling something like that off?
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I was able to go through the back door on this one, I was at a meeting with some of the state seniters and congressmen in lansing michigan about 4 years ago, and I asked them how would I go about passing a law that would allow a two day period in the middle of winter of free fishing for every one to promote the sport of ice fishing.
and I presented the positive impact it would have on the acconomy, providing jobs in retail and manufacturing for state residents, explained how it would help every one from the mom and pop bait shop to the big supermarket sport shop.
I explained that jobs = tax dollars
I showed how I would use this law to educate youth about the great out of doors in the great lake state of michigan.
I explained that the state parks would make a marginal increase of sales of daily and seasonal stickers due to the one or more visits that may be made by park users who buy daily stickers who will find it now affordable to perches a seasonal sticker.
Dollars make cents, it dose not cost the state a dollar to make a free day of fishing, but the state no matter how small the margin will make a few bucks on the deal in several areas. even though you will never see a direct connection.
It took me a total of about 5 minutes to convince a couple folks on the state leduslature that this is a good idea, 5 months later we had our first free ice fishing weekend.
my name will never be connected to this forthcomming, but those who were with me know of that eventfull day when a guided tour turned in to a history makeing event in michigan fishing history.
we already had a summer event that comes around the first or second weekend of june so it was not a far streach to make one favorable for a winter one.
the best part of this one is that every one wants to be part of a favorable law that will have a positive impact on out state ecconomy and culture.
if you want to doo some thing like this in your state, you will need to sit down and compose a letter to your congressman and ask him how to go about getting a law passed. (Yess this is a state law, the department of natural resources chooses the weekend that we will have the weekend based on prevoius years ice conditions for saftey reasons, there are no garentees that we will have ice)
if the person you talk to finds your idea a good plan he may act on it himself and save months if not years of litigation. other wise the prosess is the same as any other law written by our governing bodies.
a trip to the libary is always a good start if your highschoos us gov. is a little rusty, or you can always call your state capitol and ask the secritary what forms to present and how to go about presenting a Bill to the state leduslature, then if passed it will go to the state senate to be voted on, then to the govenor.
and from what I have seen about your fella over there in sunset state, I see no problems in him signing the bill in to law, then it will be mandated to the department of natural resources or what ever thier tital is in your state to set the best posible weekend for the event.
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Just goes to show that our resident clown is a never ending pot of great resorces!
Another item that shows why I am so proud to be a part of the: best of the best
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Utah has 1 free fishing day in June I believe. Its a great cahnce to get friends and co workers out with their families and get them fishin[
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I do wish they had a few more free days though[
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