A bill pondering how to regulate commercial fishing guides passed its Senate Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee reading on Feb. 18 after making it through the House earlier in the session.
Commercial fishing is largely unregulated in Wyoming, unlike in surrounding states like Montana, Idaho, Colorado and North Dakota. But HB 5 would give Wyoming Game and Fish, with guidance from an advisory board, the authority to create a sticker registration system for guided commercial fishing boats and potentially set limits on the number of boats out on the water in the future.
Rep. Andrew Byron (R-Jackson) brought the bill to the Senate committee and said people have been talking about regulation in the industry formally and informally in places like Hot Springs County, Sublette County and Natrona County for years.
“ House Bill Five has been worked … for two different interim sessions and far beyond that, years ago,” he said. “This is something that is near and dear to my heart.”
Previous discussions about the bill in the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resource Committee drew hours of agency feedback, public comment and committee back-and-forth. Anglers from around the state shared concerns about waters getting busier, but people had different opinions on how to deal with that overcrowding and who should implement some sort of change.
House committee members amended the bill in that process to make the cost of registration more expensive for out-of-state guides, in proportion to the current costs of individual resident and non-resident fishing licenses. They also added language so that any potential limits on launching would be “in a lawful ratio that prioritizes Wyoming resident professional guides and outfitters.”
But during the Senate committee reading, Wyoming Game and Fish Director Angi Bruce said the attorney general’s office had raised concerns about those changes.
”Those two items where you're distinguishing a difference between resident and non-resident, we would ask for an amendment to delete those so that it aligns with the Constitution,” she said, referring to the Commerce Clause that restricts states from impairing interstate trade. “ I believe the issue is because this is a commercial business rather than the private individual.”
In an earlier House committee meeting, Wyoming Board of Outfitters and Professional Guides member Lee Livingston highlighted that legal tension, too. The board currently regulates the big game hunting industry in the state.
“ When the outfitter board was first formed, a non-resident could not be an outfitter. In Wyoming that was challenged and it was defeated,” he said. “We can now have a non-resident as an outfitter. Right now we cannot charge a different price whether you're from the state or not from the state.”
Senate committee members ultimately amended the bill to remove the language that would have given preference to in-state guides.
Fishing fees
Rep. Byron also introduced HB 204 at the start of the session, which would have increased individual fishing license fees for residents and non-residents and could have helped Wyoming Game and Fish cover the costs of implementing a commercial guide registration program.
“ I had a sister bill to this that never did make it out of the House side,” Byron said. “I've ran [it] many times to try to offset some of these substantial costs that are coming with asking [for this].”
Jess Johnson with the Wyoming Wildlife Foundation said she’s worried about the agency getting saddled with the costs of the program.
“ Those dollars and that personnel is going to be pulled from doing other resource work and science, to manage a commercial outfitting thing that does not have damage on the resource. It has damage on the experience right now,” she said.
Wyoming Game and Fish Chief of Fisheries Alan Osterland added that the agency is proposing regulations to require barbless hooks in areas like the Gray Reef area of the North Platte, where there have been a lot of instances of hooking injuries. But he said the overall quality of the fisheries are “in good shape.”
“ We don't really see it as a resource issue … the department's doing what they can to protect the resource, but what it boils down to in my mind is that it's the experience issue,” Osterland said.
Johnson recommended looking at how states like Idaho are managing a boom of outdoor recreation tourism. Its outfitting board includes fishing.
“ My one contention here is that [the bill] is pretty narrow. We're looking at fishing right now, but this is not the only thing that's coming. It's wildlife photography tours, it's whitewater rafting, it's mountain biking, it's OHV use,” she said. “It's commercial outfitting in many, many forms, and I hesitate to put something on the Game and Fish that is so specific to one specific piece of outfitting when we're going to be looking at a huge wave coming down.”
The bill passed the Senate committee with a 4-1 vote and currently awaits its first reading on the Senate floor.
