If Caleb Sumrall of New Iberia had his druthers in the upcoming Bassmasters Elite Series tournament on the Sabine River out of Orange, Texas, odds are high he would head east into his home state and fish waters that look a lot like the areas he has fished for years around his hometown in the heart of Acadiana. But he cannot.

Sumrall and the other 109 Elite anglers in the tournament won’t be able to go past the Texas state line into Louisiana, which is a few long casts away from the boat launch for the second Bassmaster Elite Series contest of 2018. Our waters are off-limits, thanks to antiquated definitions of land ownership and navigable waters.

“It’s unfortunate,” Sumrall said Thursday night while driving to Toledo Bend. “I think you should be able to fish all navigable waters.”

The situation is so dire B.A.S.S. announced last year it no longer will schedule professional bass tournaments in Louisiana’s tidal waters where anglers risk being arrested for fishing what appear to be and have historically been public waters. Couple that with the fact state law doesn’t require the waters to be posted against trespassing and you have an enormous black eye — as well as economic loss — for the Sportsman’s Paradise.

It’s past time for a change. And that change may take place in Baton Rouge, where a House committee on Civil Law and Procedure is considering a bill by State Rep. Kevin Pearson, R-Slidell, that restricts the ability of private landowners to prohibit boater access to navigable waters flowing over or through their lands.

“I hope the bill passes,” Sumrall said about Pearson’s HB 391.

So does B.A.S.S., the world’s largest fishing organization, which has endorsed the proposed legislation that would reopen navigable waters in Louisiana. B.A.S.S. Conservation Director Gene Gilliland urged support of HB391.

“This bill is a start in the right direction,” Gilliland said Monday.

He also asked B.A.S.S. members in Louisiana, plus those who travel from out of state to fish in our state, to support passage of HB 391. 

B.A.S.S. wholeheartedly backs efforts by the Louisiana Sportsman’s Coalition, which wants to bring the state’s laws into the 21st Century, he said.

How bad has it gotten? Four Bassmaster Classics were held in the Louisiana Delta out of New Orleans from 1999 to 2011. A year ago B.A.S.S. said it won’t schedule another tournament in coastal waters until state laws are changed.

Trip Weldon, B.A.S.S. tournament director, touched on the last straw that crimped the playing field, er, eligible waters, for the next Bassmaster Elite Series tournament out of Orange. In previous Elite tournaments on the Sabine River, he said, anglers practiced in waters they believed were public, only to find them closed after competition began. Also, on the eve of competition there before the Bassmaster Central Open in June 2017, anglers were told they couldn’t enter a large section of tidewaters where many planned to fish.

We all need to get on the horn to our local legislators to tell them how important HB 391 is to the Sportsman’s Paradise. We have a few marked private waters in the area  but thank God our potential trespassing landscape isn’t as bad as those in lower St. Mary Parish and an area around a borrow pit near Franklin.

At least someone is trying to right the wrongs that are multiplying along the coast. Pearson’s bill states: “The running waters of the state and wild aquatic life inhabiting those waters are and remain the property of the state and, as such, title and ownership remain unchanged whether the running waters flow over public or private water bottoms.”

His bill prohibits anyone from restricting or prohibiting the “public navigation of running waters which are navigable by a motorboat.” Also, HB 391 would protect private property along the canals and other channels from damage by boaters.

The committee considering the bill includes ex-officio member and House Speaker Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia. 

 

DON SHOOPMANis outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.