Public Ownership of Rivers in the United States Part 2

Post by **Ken G** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:19 am

The information on http://www.nationalrivers.org/ is a summary of federal laws regarding access to primarily any kind of flowing water. It's main focus is access for canoes and kayaks and any other thing you can float down a stream with. They touch on fishing, camping, hiking and other outdoors activities, but their main focus is float access.

In that long first part I put up, which I first read over 5 years ago and have read numerous times since, there is one small paragraph that I must have skimmed over all these years. For some reason I must have been reading it slower and it finally sank in.

Fishermen may have even more access rights to flowing water than anyone else. Here's the paragraph I kept missing.

First, the public has the right to use all running waters, (even streams that are not physically navigable,) for activities such as fishing, (subject to state regulations to conserve fisheries,) and to walk along the banks as necessary to use these waters, in the manner that is least intrusive to private land.

This means Wisconsin's access laws are just the federal laws in practice. I fished a couple of streams in Wisconsin that there was no way you could float anything down them, but fishing them wasn't bad and access was easy.

So, that means all those tiny creeks that you can't float down are still fair game to a wading fisherman. I've always done this anyway, but apparently there are legal precedents. I'm not just being stubborn. (Okay, maybe a little.) A couple of examples on the Fox would be Hollenbeck and Morgan creeks. There is no way you can float anything but popsicle stick boats down these, but I know that at certain times of year, there are plenty of small fishable holes going pretty far upstream from their mouths.

There are plenty more creeks like these on the Fox, and probably hundreds of them through out the state.

Illinois wouldn't even have to really do anything. The federal laws are already there and take precedent over pretty much anything the state can do. All Illinois has to do is follow the federal laws.

That goes back to my snide comment in the first part of these posts. DuPage County voted to allow wading in water that runs through forest preserve land. Since it was illegal for them to ban wading there in the first place, gee thanks for giving back what was rightfully mine to begin with.

Education seems to be the key. When I find the time, I'll think of some way to do it.