lawnmowerman does have a point. For the Everstart at the Delta they had to transport the fish from the marina to Wal-Mart. Clearly a violation of DFG rules without a permit to transport live game fish. Whether they had one or not, I do not know. I didn't know anything about having the fisherman just release their own fish afterwards, and I don't know the exact rules on that.

As far as getting rules changes implemented ... The DFG regulations are only changed on a 2 year basis. The next round of changes will not be until 2005. As a normal citizen, you can can submit a proposed regulation change to the DFG Commission in writing and they will consider it after review by biologists etc. How it all goes down is still kind of a mystery to me because it IS possible for the regulations to change during the 2 year periods, but how you go about getting one of these intermediary changes is not clear.

For example, on Diamond Valley, it was proposed in 2003 that a 15" minimum size be implemented for Largemouth Bass and a 0 limit on smallmouth bass. You can see the proposal in this pdf doc:

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fg_comm/2003/sfintentions2.pdf

In 2004, that change was actually implemented after only a few months time! If you look in this doc (current 2004 regs) it's there

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fg_comm/2004/freshfishregbook04.pdf

In October 2003, I submitted in writing a proposal to change the limit at San Pablo Dam to 2 largemouth bass, none greater than 20" in size. As far as I can tell, my proposal was not considered during any of the commission meetings. You can see the proposals month by month from the Commission at:

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fg_comm/2004/proposedregs04.htm

I do believe that they will consider it at some point, but to get immediate changes to the regulations, it seems like you have to have some kind of clout to get on the commission's agenda and get considered. In other words, if the DFG has a specific biologist who works at Diamond Valley and wants to get the limit changed, he can probably push it through. If you are Joe Blow citizen, odds are that your recommendations will go to the back of the line.

From BnT and Sonoma's point of view, the best way to get a regulation change pushed across that would allow DFG to issue permits to transport live game fish for tournaments over land, would be to write it all up and then find a sympathetic DFG agent or biologist to push the issue for you and get it on the commissions agenda. Otherwise, you can submit it to the commission and cross your fingers for 2005.

My personal opinion is that unless your issue is percieved to be a fisheries threatening issue ( endangered steelhead run, salmon snagging, etc ) the odds of getting a rules change in between the 2 year period is slim to none. It was actually suprising to me that the Diamond Valley and Perris regulations got on for 2004, but those lakes have a good guy in charge of them who is actively trying to manage the fisheries.

more than my .02

-Rob