EDITORIAL: Love the tax, love the fish

If a tax can ever be loved, it’s the federal excise tax that was put into effect 75 years ago by the Sportfish Restoration Act. 

Port Washington and the rest of Ozaukee County should be especially appreciative of the tax, for it is partly responsible for the sportfishing phenomenon that has made the Great Lake at our doorstep a renewed source of water recreation opportunities and economic vitality. 

The tax was intended to sustain sport fisheries, and it has done so admirably, but over the years its conservation benefits have broadened to support public access to the water of America’s lakes, rivers and streams for everyone who appreciates this splendid natural resource. 

Fishers pay the tax, but everyone benefits. 

Every state gets some of the SRA tax revenue, but few get more than Wisconsin. The revenue distribution by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is based mainly on the number of fishing licenses issued in each state. Wisconsin sells the fifth most fishing licenses in the country, about 1.4 million. This year the Wisconsin Department of Natural resources has received $7 million from SRA.

SRA funding comes from a 10% excise tax on fishing equipment, import duties on pleasure boats and a portion of the federal gas tax attributed to motorboats.

The tax has the unusual cachet of having been enacted with enthusiastic support from those who would be paying it—fishing equipment manufacturers and anglers who bought their products. Congress passed it with a strong bipartisan majority.

Wisconsin’s share of the SRA revenue is used to maintain boating access to state waters, improve fish habitat and raise and stock fish. The tax accounts for almost a quarter of the money spent each year by the DNR on its fisheries programs. 

The impact of the fish stocking program is on dramatic display on Lake Michigan in the fishing success off the Ozaukee County shore this spring. Anglers are launching boats at the Port Washington ramps at a record pace. The Port Washington charter fleet, a significant contributor to the area’s economy, has been enjoying robust business. 

It’s all being driven by the phenomenal catches brought ashore. Photos of anglers who caught their limits of salmon and trout posing proudly with their catches are common fare on social media.

Those catches are the result of DNR stocking. The fish were either released into the lake as juveniles or were the descendants of stocked fish that adapted to naturally reproduce in the lake and its tributaries.

The introduction of non-native coho and chinook salmon and rainbow and brown trout in the late 20th century revitalized a lake whose native fish species had been decimated by invasive mussels and other alien aquatic creatures. That set the stage for the sport fishing bonanza, but did nothing to support the recovery of native fish.

Populations of fish that were the mainstays of the Lake Michigan commercial fishing industry—bloater chub, yellow perch, whitefish and lake trout—were reduced to levels that resulted in the DNR banning commercial catches or limiting them to token amounts.

The DNR fisheries program pays attention to commercial fishing in the state waters of Lake Michigan, but this amounts mostly to estimating fish populations as a basis for catch limits. Now, however, the agency has an opportunity to take a small but significant step to advance the restoration of the lake’s commercial fishery.

One of the rare success stories in the struggle of native fish to rebound from their losses is the lake trout. Numbers of the fish that was once considered the finest food the lake could provide have been so depleted that commercial netting has been banned since the 1950s. Recovery has been slow, but now it has reached the point where allowing a small commercial catch is under consideration. 

A proposal to allow lake trout caught in whitefish trap nets to be kept and sold by commercial fishers awaits a DNR decision. Current regulations require the lake trout to be returned to the lake whether alive or dead.

This change should be made. The lake trout population is healthy enough that sport fishers are now allowed to catch them in an all-year fishing season with a limit of five per day. Sportfishing interests oppose any relaxation of commercial limits, but it’s time for this harvest to be shared.

This incremental step is warranted to support a commercial fishing industry that, though shrunken by the devastation wrought by invasive species, deserves a place in the regional economy, and because people who do not have the means or ability to take part in the sportfishing boom should be able to benefit from the lake’s bounty by buying fish for their tables.

That bounty was spectacular in the lake trout’s heyday. Preserved photos show burly Port Washington fishermen tossing lake trout that had been scooped from near-shore trap nets into open boats filled to the gunwales with 15 to 20-pound fish. Lake trout brought in by the Smith Bros. Fisheries crew attracted fish lovers from far and wide to the Fish Shanty restaurant and fish market in downtown Port.

That all ended when one the most vicious of all invasive species, the sea lamprey eel, nearly wiped out the lake trout population by attaching to the fat fish, grinding through their sides with a sawlike circle of teeth and suctioning out their fluids.

Though the lamprey was eventually brought under control, new invasives hindered the trout recovery. But now progress has been made, and the DNR should not hesitate to allow a commercial catch.

When it does, it can be said that the Sportfish Restoration Act helped, in a small way at least, to restore a commercial fish—another reason to love the tax.