Jimbo
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Maybe it’s time for members to start buying lots on the Guadalupe there. At least with members owning some of the lots we could encourage others in the subdivision the proper stewardship of the water and the Fishery. I think I will look into it myself….
Jimbo
Did you fish above or below the dam/upstreambarrier? The story is they have been in the middle of a restoration program for some time to make everything above the dam 100% Rio Grande Cutthroats. About 4 or 5 years ago they removed all fish they could above the dam and then rotenoned to stream. They thought initially they got them all, but apparently they missed a few brookies and even when they reintroduced Rio Grande Cutthroats the Brookies population came back too. So after some time they closed the fishery and killed the stream again. I believe the 2nd re-stocking efforts were last summer (or summer before last). I haven’t fished Rio Costilla since about 3 years ago. That was a time after the first attempt at removal and re-stocking. A stream monitor came along and asked questions about what we had caught. I had caught several brookies in addition to the Cutthroats. He was in disbelief, before I showed him the pictures. He took some notes including my contact imformation. I hope they accomplished their goals last time to make this what it should be above the dam, 100% pure Rio Grande Cutthroats.
Jimbo
I have done my best to explain why this year’s LAP is the way it is and the rational behind those decisions. We are in the final days of roll out of these decisions. We have made many changes in our website and how the registration process will perform. There should be no problems with this year’s registration process.
As far as this years stocking goes, the hatcheries are feeling the effects of COVID and the Rainbows and Browns we use for stocking will be different this season. We will have 4 full loads of Rainbows with a possible 5th load. Year to year we see a slight variation in the sizes delivered from the hatcheries. These fish will be a little smaller this year which means numbers stocked will be up. There will be no Browns this year. We are in the process of changing vendors and the size requirement could not be met, so they will be delayed till next year again.
I respect everyone’s opinion about how things should be addressed in the LAP. Demand for membership will probably never be a steady state thing again as it was back before the early 2000’s. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. We will do our best to increase lease sites for access. We will do our best to bring to the river quality Trout for all Sportsmen to enjoy. It takes a tremendous amount of effort by all those involved to bring this program to fruition. And those doing the real lifting are not paid a penny and receive no perks for putting in the 100s of hours it requires to produce this program. If you want to get involved in this effort, then volunteer to join GRTU’s Board of Directors. It is important to concentrate on the real goal of the LAP and that is to pay the $100K it takes to buy Trout and put them in the river today. Without that you have a fishery stocked by TPWD of 8-12″ fish numbering around 24,000 for the season. I don’t know if many here remember the days before GRTU’s effort to stock significant numbers of larger fish in the river, but as one who does, it was quite a dfferent experience back then. Today’s Guadalupe River fishery is considered a quality Trout Fishery and that is something we can all be thankful.
Jimbo
You can still sign up on GRTU’s website and not sign up for the LAP. If you want to volunteer, you still can. Just e-mail Boards Members of the respective chairs that you are interested donating your time.
Jimbo
We have never had 1000 members in the LAP. The most we ever had was last year and that number was 950 all toll. We tried to cap last year’s membership to 850 (which was an increase from the previous and all previous years), but because of the site crashing, and many missing the notice for registration we doled out another 100 to calm the waters.
Jimbo
Increasing membership will allow that many more people to join, it does nothing for crowding and we know that.
As far as violations go you’d think that a great majority would be new anglers not understanding the rules. In fact most serious violations I dealt with were verteran members who knew the rules, but knew they could likely bend them, and get away with it. A couple of examples: I dealt with, a veteran member who lent his pass to a relative (which is strictly prohibited) and then he tried getting himself and 3 additional non-LAP members into L&L with his LAP pass alone. Another member which is the only one I ever have had to permanently exclude from membership, knew he was not supposed to keep any Trout, but he wanted to keep a trophy he caught. I was the witness and talked to him about it, but he told me where I could go…. He’ll never be an LAP member again. Just two examples.
I think you would find that at least 95% of previous LAP members would want to join again if they could. Remember the LAP is selling out in hours not days. That tells me more people want memberships than we sell. And giving a early registration to all previous members would exclude all but a few new members. Even if we limited an early registration to a certain number of previous members, then the other previous members would likely cry foul.
The number you receive as a result of registration does not necessarily reflect the order in which you registration was logged. I signed up last year in the first few minutes of registration and my number was 611.
I know you are well intentioned. I also know many of you just want to have your membership and your friends to have their memberships and are worried that: 1) you won’t get your LAP membership this time, and 2) your friends won’t recieve their’s. Raising the fee will only exclude those who deserve membership as much as you, but may not make enough money to afford higher prices. When I started fishing the Guadalupe and I was in College, even though memberships back then were cheap, there were years I didn’t have the extra cash to buy one. We are a non-profit organization and by law must spend all the money’s we take in, in a timely fashion (with some reserves allowed). If we charged $500 per membership all we would do is exclude younger members who don’t have that kind of extra cash laying around. We would still sell out an number of memberships we offered. It would just skew the membership to wealther anglers.(and as we know wealth does not guarantee good behavior) And remember we are trying to bring in more young people to GRTU/TU so there will people who avocate, volunteer, and want to protect the future of cold water fisheries.
There is no way to have this limited resource provide enough memberships for all who want one. More lease sites will help, but we will never have sites/room to sell memberships to everyone who wants one. I would guess if membership was unlimited, we would sell over 2000 and that is a crazy number. We want to sell as many as is reasonable, but that means limiting memberships, so some will not get their memberships, and have to use public access. Thus with limited LAP memberships we can sell, a growing number of members in GRTU/TU, special programs encouraging young people and women, the only fair thing is to give all the membership an equal chance. Therefore there can’t be preconditions for existing members (or volunteers or Board Members) getting early registration. That would lead LAP membership to start looking even more grey and male.
Jimbo
The real problem is the number of access sites we can lease. More sites mean more room and more memberships we can sell. We’ve had as many as 20 during my tenture, but we have lost sites for various reasons over the years, the most appalling is LAP member misconduct. And once we loose sites it is very hard to replace them (think: Kanz, Beans, Cypress Bend, 6B, Whitewater, Hideout, JDL, Horseshoe, Gypsy River Resort, and others… just think what access would be like if we still had those sites) . Many of you think we could rent more sites if we wanted too, but that is not the case. Myself and now Dan have been trying to increase sites for the LAP all the time. Most private owners don’t want any part of it (or neighborhood coventants against them) and we have talked to every commercial outfitter even after they have told us no in the past. This is not a matter of money it a matter of limited sites and some that flat don’t want us anymore. It’s something we are going to have to live with. So nothing is perfect.
We have strived to do the best we can to provide everyone with the best possible experience fishing the river. In some cases our problems are the product of doing an exceptional job. When we started stocking Big Trout and the news got out everyone wanted to fish the river, even those who had never considered fishing for Trout. This has led to many more sportsmen wanting to fish for Trout, wanting in GRTU’s LAP, and competition for those memberships going through the roof.
As far as the system in place to handle the demand, the servers will be ready when registration opens up, we have had Justin address these concerns and tested the system. Last year’s system lock up will not be repeated this year. So wake up early, get your membership, and buy day passes for your friends who may not be able to get their own.
Jimbo
If we had passes for weekends, or weekdays, or any other differentiation in LAP Memberships…. Who would we get to enforce these rules?
We would need someone in authority to patrol all lease sites full time and visit them many times everyday to maintain order. It would lead to a nightmare or “I forgot” and “Who gives you the aurthority” confrontations that are not what we are trying to achieve here. We want everyone to come to the river and enjoy their time on the water fishing without the need to police other members and their actions. Adding additional conditions would just complicate what we are already doing. Even as simple as things are today we still have people violating rules, usually innocently, but there always few bad apples that come along every season especially early in the season to make life difficult for all the good members who do it right everytime, all the time.
Jimbo
The Board of Directors has voted on this matter. We will have 1000 LAP memberships this coming season. There will be no early memberships before the October 1st opening of registration for the resons suggested here. There will be an e-mail blast coming soon about this matter. This was not a unanimous vote. The main reason is that we can not be seen as an exclusive club and giving priority to those who have previously been members or those who have volunteered for stocking, TroutFest, and other in-stream projects. If we did give such an advantage to those were previous LAP Members or volunteers, then soon we would see memberships available to new members or members who can not volunteer time dindle down to a number that approaches zero over time. (Because if such an incentive was given we would soon have more people eligible than memberships available.) I know that some will view this decision as a disappointment. I myself do not. I will be up early on October 1st taking my chances like everybody else. If I get a membership great! If I don’t, then I will make due will the public access available and spend my time wading to the waters I like to fish. Remember, GRTU is a conservation organization first and foremost. We have this Lease Access Program primarily to fund our ambitious stocking programs for the Guadalupe River giving all Texans an opportunity to fish for Trout. These stocking for the benefit of all Texans brings us public recognition and support for all our programs.
Jimbo
The GRTU Board is aware of these discussions and we are talking about alternatives to the present system. The breaking up of membership passes to 7 day, Mon-Fri, and Sat-Sun, would be very hard to monitor and enforce. Some things sound good on the surface but are very difficult to affect in the real world. Anyway proposals have been put before the board and voting will be at our next board meeting in September.
Jimbo
Water temps are still marginal to fish for Trout right now. I would wait till at least the beginning of October (If flows remain the same) before going back and trying to catch a few. Restraint now will mean more hold-over Trout swimming around for the coming season.
Jimbo
Remember when we didn’t sell out all of the available memberships? I do and those days are gone. Even with Ron’s plan of allowing those with 5 years continuous membership first shot, this will lead to a smaller and smaller number of open memberships available to everyone else over time. Everybody wants to renew, but the LAP can not seem like a legacy for the old guys in the chapter and the new members will just have to wait for someone to move out of state or die. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think the program can go down that path. Even if that means I don’t get a LAP membership and I have been a member for over 35 years and I ran the program for 12. If I don’t get mine then I use the public access sites and wade further and buy some day passes and bother my friends who do get their LAP membership.
By the way, thank you everybody. Everything you have said is really a complement that we have been wildly successful building the LAP and a fishery that everyone wants to enjoy. It is a testament that we have moved the fishery to a place where it’s a disaster when you can’t get to every foot of it.
Jimbo
I hate to say it, but during the summer when we don’t have sustaining flows not many are signing on to the forum to see what’s happening. I have read the suggestions and I see a down side to what is suggested. I don’t know many members of the LAP that don’t want to renew their membership. I can see the legacy members buying up all the memberships and no new members can get in the LAP. If membership was not limited it wouldn’t be a problem, but since we have only so many sites, that can reasonably handle only so many people, membership needs to be limited. If all those memberships are bought by last years members, it begins to sound like a old boys exclusive private club. We can’t have that. The only way we avoid this is to have equal opportunity for everyone that wants to sign up to do so at the same time and roll the dice.
We are taking steps to make the sign up process better with changes in the platform. It probably won’t crash this coming season. These suggestions should be going to the V.P. of Fisheries and the V.P. of Membership directly. Their e-mails are on the contact list, so shoot they a suggestion.
Jimbo
No matter what we do, we are pretty much maxed out considering the number of leases and number of parking spots they make available right now. We need more access spots and parking spots before we increase the maximum number memberships available. We have gone from about 550 memberships just 6 or 7 years ago to almost 900 all toll, and we’ve lost a few sites. We’ve heard from many members saying there are already too many memberships sold. It’s between a rock and a hard place no matter what we do.
So until things change,… my recommendations,… be like Jimbo. Get up at the crack of dawn on Oct 1 and sign up in the first minute it’s open. I’ve had no special treatment all these years of signing up and I’ve been a continuous member since the 80’s.
I wish we could just solve all these problems by leasing every site we’ve ever had, but some have been sold private, or bridges were burned because of violations. This is not as easy as just calling every outfitter and getting them to sign on, many don’t want any part of anything which is not pay per day at their office. V.P. of Fisheries is “NOT” an easy job. Dan Cone is carrying on in a fine tradition, doing a great job, and we are Lucky to have him! He’s even added to aspects like Trout feeding during late spring through fall. Soon we will have a better Brown Trout (genetics) and in stream river restoration.
Jimbo
Guys
I will pass along your requests to Dan Cone and the Board for consideration.
I understand where this request comes from. Who ever thought, way back when, that we would have to limit the number of memberships that can be sold? I guess Bill Higdon and myself are partly responsible with the change in emphasis on stocking larger Trout and the attention this brought to the fishery. We still need to address many problems we see in the Guadalupe River, and it’s habitat, for the long term solution to maintaining the fishery, but the larger Trout sure brought a spotlight to the Guadalupe and it’s Trout Fishery.
Jimbo
