Oh, crud, Harlan.
Let me begin by saying you have a good and kind heart and if most people were like you perhaps we wouldn't need licensing. For that matter, if everyone loved his neighbor we wouldn't need assault and battery laws. Unfortunately, reality is otherwise. Your
points:
"Don't want to relinquish more rights and privileges to the state..."
Requiring a fishing license doesn't restrict anyone's rights because anyone can get one. There's no test involved. You'd be better off arguing against creel and size limits. They DO constitute a restriction and know what? I'm glad. Is it our god given rig
ht to take as much as we want and screw everybody else, including the next generation and the one after that?
"They already monitor tax spent on fishing equipment..."
OK, I didn't know that. But so what. Right now an angler's
"There are regulation posters in every tackle shop..."
Educating anglers is not the primary argument for wanting a license. It's just a perk. But at least handing someone a book of rules is a firmer statement than displaying a curled and yellowed sheet of paper on the wall somewhere behind the soda machine. W
ould you suggest we stop give young drivers a rule book and just hang the regs on the wall at the DMV?
"class bias in charging $30 (or $20 or whatever) for a license"
What about the $20 for a freshwater license? The $40 for a lobster license? Hunting licenses? The point here is not to restrict access to a resource, it's to ensure that resource remains available.
Freshwater licenses have not decimated the sport. They have not prevented anyone who wanted to from fishing. In my view they do not constitute overregulation. In PA, where I grew up, freshwater licensing has allowed the state to exersize superior fish and
game management. There are more deer and trout there now than at any point in history. It strikes me your arguments would sit very well with the buffalo hunters of the last century. Lucky for us they were all good guys and left so many of them behind.