There's a lot I want to say but I don't have time right now. First of all thankyou to Fish Chris, Wade, Joey Castro, Don Osborne and Erik P for driving a long way through some really crappy traffic to the meeting. If these guys weren't there, there would have been no one to reprsent fishing interests. I did see one other guy with a Ranger jacket on but didn't get a chance to talk to him.

Second of all - I owe all of you guys an apology for having the wrong address for the meeting. I got the address of some page that came up on google for that school, but unfortunately the address was about 1.5 miles away from where the school was. Talk about embarrasing and frustrating!

The best way to summarize the meeting I would say was it was a good first step. This was the first meeting for public comment and everyone who's managing the dam problem at least is now aware that bass fisherman care about what happens with the fish in the lake. The officials on hand seemed to know very little about the fishery at the lake. The guy in charge of recreation who was there to field questions didn't know that there were spotted bass in the lake... so that was kind of discouraging. But hey - they know now, and they know our agenda (I handed out copies to the various people in charge). The guy facilitating the meeting seemed to be at least interested in what we had to say and said he'd contact me in the future to help them communicate with the fishing community. So that was a positive.

I'm going to add a new page to the site with a bunch more details about this issue so that everyone can stay informed. Their estimates were that no work would begin on the dam until 2006, possibly 2007 - so we're a long ways off still, but that doesn't mean we should do nothing. As soon as the lake goes below the launch ramp, getting fish electroshocked and removed from the lake will become just about impossible. So we need to be aware of that issue first and just go from there.