So I got out to the lake late yesterday. Sitting in the parking lot I
was getting my stuff ready and watching another guy getting his
inspection from the DEP. As I was driving by I waved. The Officer
asked me if I wanted an inspection, I told him it was late, if there
was anything in particular he wanted to look at OK, but I would rather
get out to the water. He was nice and said he would check me next
time.

Personally I support the Ct. DEP. In a nutshell. When I was young I
lived near a nice river, but it was so polluted the water often ran
red and other weird colors, there were mills upstream. Now it is a
trout stream. You could not even swim in the Ct. River, now you can
even eat some of the fish. You could not fish Stripers, Salmon are
returning, and there are plenty of Trout and other fish for everyone,
maybe more than when I was young and of course the pressure on the
fish is huge compared to back then. Last season I had a guy pull me
over on Crystal Lake in Stafford. He was doing a survey about Trout
fishing, they wanted to know how fishermen felt about closing the
Trout season during the hot months to take some of the pressure off of
the population. I felt that if that's what they had to do, they had a
good track record with me.

Anyway, it was the first time I ever said no. It felt kind of funny
but I find with the big wooden skiff, no one pays much attention to me
anyway. Oh, I still get pulled over and met at the dock, but they just
want to look at the boat and that's cool.