During the annual consortium of department of fish and wildlife resource officers in Washington, D.C. it was proposed by a small group that fisheries managers seriously consider removing the use of real time imaging as a means of legally catching fish. At least 12 state agencies were said to be in agreement. And the small group was lobbying for a country wide “livescope ban” or a ban of forward facing sonar technologies like Garmin LiveScope, the originator of forward-facing, real-time sonar in the finding and catching game fish on state fisheries.
LiveScope has been an uber-polarizing subject among anglers both professionally and even down to the infrequent vacation angler. So this doesn’t come as a complete shock that someone would put forward nonsensical motions like this.
Most game and fish agencies are charged with managing fish populations for consumption. They work tirelessly to ensure the fisheries are in stable healthy conditions to support gamefish populations and spawn recruitment from season to season at a high enough rate to sustain harvest by license holding anglers.
It’s good and fair policy to operate this way, and we commend our state fisheries biologists and DNR representatives who work to ensure we have health fisheries to fish.
To see the full list of states considering the ban, follow this link.
