I like the idea of having a certain area designated for sport fishing only this time of year. Let me clarify something though, I did not say it was ok for a guy to set right on top of a pile of sport gear, it takes a real asshole to do that, 9/10 guys will try to weave their gear around the sports gear but sometimes traps will get set over, usually due to the fact that your average sport gear setup has 450 feet of line in 250 feet of water, so traps are rarely right beneath the buoy, or most will just leave the area all together if there is a minefield of sports gear that cant just be weaved around. im not saying everyone is an angel out there but this type of thing goes both ways.
example: while fishing barkley sound the last few weeks there was a sport closure for the first 2 weeks of the commercial season, we had a string just inside china creek, come back to haul it on the day that the sporties opened and there is literally about 25 sets of sport gear peppered on top of our string, luckily for those guys I am very patient with this type of thing and didn't mind adding an extra hour to my already long day to ensure nobody lost their gear, I had to cut and retie lines about 20 times, including one poor bastards yellow floating line that made a real mess of things, boo hoo right? if you read back to the beginning of the thread you'll see I was trying to help jeff and do sincerely hope he gets his traps back.
to anyone that might think messing with commercial gear will solve your problem better give your head a shake. I agree there are some real assholes out there in the commercial industry but no matter what the case, threatening to cut gear off is a major no no. go through with cutting and you've just opened pandoras shitbox, one cell phone photo is all it takes to get the book thrown at someone for this, and that goes both ways. 2 wrongs don't make a right. I would love to see what would happen to some hero rolling in to the ramp with a stack of commercial gear only to be greeted by the cops. what would you say? hey officer I only stole his 6000 dollars worth of gear cause he set over me? have fun dealing with that.
as for me having a single sided view you couldn't be further from the truth, but I wont get into that as I don't feel I need to justify anything to you. all im saying in regards to sport fishing during the commercial fishery is simple, either don't, or get informed so you know what youre doing and what those around you are doing. if the 3-500 dollar sets of gear are so important, then why gamble with them this time of year anyway? this is all a game you must be willing to play if you really, really feel the need to fill your freezer this time of year. all these "screwing with peoples gear" comments are just silly. and you guys spouting off about cutting scotchmans your coming off no better than the stereotypical commercial fisherman that wants nothing more than to steal and wreck every piece of sport gear out there. take a look in the mirror and unpuff your chest when you make a comment like that. as for owning the resource, we get to fish probably 45-50 days out of 365 in a year, sporties in most areas get the full 365, including the 45-50 that were out there trying to make a buck, so I don't believe any one of us is delusional enough to believe we own the resource.
