Do We Need Saltwater Licenses?

"Because you believe that, in fact, they will get power?"

"No. We were opposed to it because that was what they believed." When I told him I didn't understand anything he was trying to tell me he said, "Then you don't understand fish wars."

But if there's one thing I do understand it's fish wars, because I've been in the middle of them my entire adult life. Finally, I asked Schill if increased revenue for the management of southern flounder might not be salubrious for his industry, since that species is the number-one target of both commercials and anglers. "That's the old liberal notion-throw money at a problem, and we'll fix it," he replied. "And it's only been a recent revelation-like this year-that this state has been overfishing southern flounder."

It's "only been a recent revelation" because the state lacked data. It lacked data because it lacked funds. And it lacked funds because it lacked license revenue and the federal aid in sportfish restoration that goes with it.

Schill is not always this long-winded and unintelligible, especially when he is talking to his own people. So tight and terse was his diction in a 2003 statement to The National Fisherman that, in just 55 words, he was able to say everything I've been trying to say up to this point: "Look what happened in the other states," he declared. "Look what the CCA has done with that license when it's been put in place. In some states you've got fish that have been given 'game fish' status, taken off consumers' plates. In other states, gillnet bans. And in Florida, they got the ultimate: a commercial net ban."

Exactly!