We’ve seen a couple of decades of spittle and vitriol over the Right to Bear Arms, and many hunters are fishermen, can we assume we’ll offer as good a fight with legislators as the NRA?

We’ve mentioned the depletion of commercial fishing stocks in the ocean, how scientists predict the demise of almost all commercial fisheries by 2040 (based on our current consumption) – and a logical crisis “first step” will be to limit what everyone can catch.

The journal Science published a study by Felicia Coleman of Florida State University showing that anglers are the largest human threat for many species off America.

My question is, after all the posturing and rhetoric – after the Hollywood celebrities swear publicly they’re lifelong anglers, after lobbyists for Trout Unlimited, CalTrout, and other angling organizations wine and dine senators, and it’s all for naught, how are you going to spend your quota?

Joe Borg, European commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, said: “Control and enforcement of catch limits should be the cornerstone of the common fisheries policy. The future of sustainable fisheries requires us to replace a system which is inefficient, with one which can really produce results.” Under Borg’s plan, each EU state would be given a quota for each protected species. Governments would then divide this quota between commercial fishermen and anglers. Anglers would be banned from marketing their catches.

In the US we’re already prevented from marketing our catch, but the trend is plain. If the 2040 date is accepted as fact, most governments will ignore the issue until it’s too late, then clamp some Draconian legislation in place at the last moment. If you figure they’ll finally wise up about 20 years before the fish are gone, then the issue comes to a head in 2020.

Eleven years from now.

Now all those marine V-8’s and pleasure barges are hunting a freshwater venue – as they’ve used their allotment of salt water quarry by March, and if we give them a decade to start the same spiral in freshwater, it’s opening day of 2031, and you’re allotted 6 trout for the season.

Catch and Release may no longer be an option, because a 25% mortality rate is unacceptable.

We fought that legislation too – only we chose an aging Tom Cruise as spokesman – and he got Congress sidetracked on the whole Scientology thing and we lost. The decline in size of freshwater fish over the same 20 years, rendered those big stonefly nymphs illegal, and now anything over a #12 triples the mortality rate for trophy fish (11″ and longer).

So you’ve got 6 trout per season; do you go for the big dollar Montana trip – the cedar lodge, the grizzled guide, and use your entire quota in a single outing, or do you husband your quota until October – when the streams are deserted, and everyone else is working on their allotment of Pikeminnow and Suckers?

Take your time, you’ve got at least a decade to decide…