Innocent Trip Could Become Reel Headache

Take a kid fishing in Washington.

I dare you.

It might not be as cheap as taking the family to Club Med, but fishing can be a great bonding experience, as long there’s enough money in the kitty to post the bond and hire a lawyer.

Ask Russ Cooley, publisher of the Redmond-based “Fishing Holes” magazine.

Cooley says he has spent nearly $2,000 in legal fees and traveled 1,500 miles to beat a $133 ticket for violating a bizarre fishing rule that’s not even written in the Washington fishing regulations pamphlet.

All for naught.

“I still don’t know whether I can legally take my 2-year-old son fishing,” he said Tuesday.

The costly family fishing odyssey began in May, when Cooley signed up for the Lake Chelan king salmon derby. Cooley had purchased $35 derby tickets for himself and his son, Shawn, who was nearly 2 years old at the time.

Shawn, of course, did not need a fishing license. Page 6 of Washington’s 1995-96 fishing regulations pamphlet clearly says that anglers ages 0-14 do not need a fishing license.

“This implies to me that a 2-year-old child is allowed to go fishing,” Cooley said.

But Washington Fish and Wildlife Department enforcement agent Graham Grant saw it differently. After spotting Cooley running two heavy salmon rods on downriggers, Grant issued Cooley a ticket for fishing with two rods. The agent contends the small child was incapable of handling the large rod and therefore Cooley was breaking the rule against using more than one rod at a time.

Since we reported this incident in early June, Cooley has made five 300-mile round-trip visits to the Chelan District Court.

“The Chelan County prosecutor originally offered to drop the charges if I agreed to not get any game law violations for a year,” Cooley said. “But I’m not a criminal and I don’t think I did anything wrong, so I decided to fight it.”

Last week, just days before a jury trial was scheduled to begin, the prosecutor offered another deal to drop the charges if Cooley promised to be a good boy and not sue the Fish and Wildlife Department.

“I was getting so I couldn’t afford it anymore,” Cooley said. “But even after the case was dismissed, I tried to find out where I could look to know exactly whether I’m breaking the law when I’m fishing with my son. Turns out that it’s not written anywhere. It’s up to the discretion of the officer.”

Wildlife enforcement agents say that if the child is tending the rod, a parent has little to worry about.

“If a kid has reached the end of his attention span and is off doing something else, then you simply reel in that line,” one agent told me.

But how do you know for sure that an agent will agree that your child is capable of tending a rod?

“I have video tape of my son catching a 9-pound fish,” Cooley said. “Every child is different. I know what my boy is capable of. The agent doesn’t. If they want to be the parent, the can come over and change the diapers, too.”

No more bull: Idaho Fish and Game Department biologists did an about-face on their recommendations for bull trout fishing regulations at Lake Pend Oreille.

“When we talk to fishermen at public meetings next week, we’re going to propose a closure on bull trout,” said Ned Horner, regional fisheries manager.

Currently, Lake Pend Oreille and the mouth of the Clark Fork River are the only areas in the region where bull trout can be kept. The daily limit is one fish longer than 20 inches.

Elk surviving: Finally, some good news for Blue Mountains elk hunters. An ongoing study on calf survival has found that 64 percent of the calves born this spring are still alive, up from about 45 percent at the same time last year.

“It’s beginning to look as though the drought was a major contributor to the high calf mortality of recent years,” said wildlife researcher Woody Myers. Although the data aren’t complete, it’s possible, he said, that drought concentrated the elk near water sources and made the calves easier prey to bears and cougars.

Chukar numbers: Recently released results from surveys of chukars in Eastern Washington indicate the birds are booming in the Columbia Basin but struggling in Asotin County this season.

Biologists counted 48 percent fewer chukars in Asotin county than they did last year. But recent aerial surveys out of the Ephrata region found a 60 percent increase in chukars - and more doves than last year.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review