Recently I ran into an old friend that had fished with us in Baja two years ago. After getting caught up and swapping fish lies he said, “Jim, I’ve been faithfully reading TRN for years. The past few months it seems like your Editor’s Creel has gotten a little…well…soft.” I just double-blinked and stared in thought. Soft?

I don’t like soft unless it’s my wife, my grand daughter, my pillow, or the gooey stuff that gushes out of a S’more. My life has been encompassed by hard. Hard work, hard rock, hard times, hard-core and hard liquor over rock-hard ice. “

“What’s this soft stuff?” I had to ask.

“Well, it just seems that you’ve avoided some of the important issues for the past few months,” he said. “I haven’t seen your usual prose. You know, taking on the hard issues that those other guys shy away from in fear of offending someone.”

I thanked him for the comments, we shook hands and away I went to sulk.

He was right of course. Sometimes we just get so buried in the turmoil of the fish, wildlife and outdoor “industry” that we need to re-evaluate. None of us can afford to get soft if we want our resources to improve. Our outdoors are continually under attack from various fractions and I don’t see that nearing an end soon. But where do we start?

Leadership in the state’s capitols is poor at best. Extreme environmentalists are the 20-ton gorilla with their endless finances. Morale inside the fish and wildlife departments is at an all time low. The tribes, river gillnetters, politicians and the guy up the street, all seem to have their own agenda to pursue and to hell with the rest of us or what’s best for the resources.

One reader writes about the situation in California, “F&G just published their list of top accomplishments in 2011 (wolves, bears, Tsunami, websites, etc.) and the story is clear. They could care less about our sport and the industry that supports it. What a paltry list. This is a travesty and waste of our tax and license dollars. F&G should be ashamed! No wonder license sales go down each year. When are we going to get a department that actually does something useful for us? They haven’t done much for angling in the last 25 years except watch it decline. THEY SHOULD ALL BE FIRED!”

And from another reader, “Washington has the worst fish and game’crats in the country!”

Oregon’s F&W department still publishes a weekly recreation report (Washington quit theirs) but news releases from Oregon talk about their hatchery advisory committee looking for a commercial fishing representative, or the commission approving the purchase of a new ODFW headquarters. I mean really…who gives a rip? Come on commissioners, let’s get some bite into the meat and stop with the fluff. Do something for the resource, and for us!

Washington’s F&W managers continue to do just about nothing except limit or close fisheries so they don’t have to manage. Their big news in January was the closing of 41 rivers in Puget Sound and on the Olympic Peninsula to meet their “statewide steelhead management plan.” Bull! Do they really think we believe this is protection of the resource? Get real here. When they stop the fishing they don’t have to manage. Wonder if they are doing anything about the river-choking gillnets? Nothing. I’m hoping the commission and its new commissioners can see through this smokescreen and do something about it. Most recently Washington’s commission is the single bright light on the West Coast. And what should they do to the department’s mismanagers? As our California reader says, THEY SHOULD ALL BE FIRED!

There are other players out there too. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council seem to be doing a damn poor job of managing, especially with the marine protected areas. The Pacific Halibut Commission reduces the quotas and limits the days. In Washington they are now debating summer salmon fisheries in the North of Falcon process (thank God for the volunteers that donate their lives for weeks-on-end fighting for us), which, if history truly repeats itself, the Department’s salmon management team will give in to the tribes that refuse to sit at the table until the end. (Note to Washington’s Commissioners - THEY SHOULD ALL BE FIRED!) In Oregon, who truly knows what is going on? And then there are the state’s legislatures that come heavily influenced by cash, often from the environmentalists and always from special interests. Can the same be said about the governors? And just who is the Humane Society of the United States? (See 20-ton gorilla above.) This isn’t your cat and dog show Humane Society.

I could go on but there aren’t enough pages. So friends, have we gotten soft or is this hard-core enough? Want to do something about it? Get out the hammer and chisel then join the rest of us. Start chipping away because that is the only way we have a fighting chance to save what is ours. Our fish, our wildlife, our outdoor resources.

And for the next round of hard, send a letter to us with your hard-core facts and concerns. Don’t go to GOT SOFT. We need you.