Senators John Breaux (D-LA) and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) have introduced the Right To Fish Act which would grant recreational fishermen priority access to America's public trust marine resources.

The American Sportfishing Association (ASA) is responsible for developing the legislation in response to an array of proposed policies that would regulate recreational angling. 

The bill would limit fishery closures to specific, well-defined areas where recreational fishing has caused demonstrable adverse effects. Once established targets are reached, those areas would be reopened immediately to recreational anglers—though not necessarily to other user groups.

The pro-recreational fishing legislation may have surfaced at a precarious time as sport fishing organizations scramble to respond to the announcement that the recreational fishery along the Atlantic Seaboard had once again surpassed its target for summer flounder.

Pres Pate, director of North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, told the Marine Fisheries Commision that the recreational summer flounder fishery had exceeded its target take by a projected 8-millions-pounds in the current season.

Some interested parties argue that recreational fishermen already hold an unofficial priority user group status.

"When that legislation was first sent to me I thought it was a joke. I laughed, I couldn't believe it was seriously introduced," says Jerry Schill, President of the North Carolina Fisheries Association. "This is the fifth consecutive year the recreational flounder fishery has over shot their target. When commercial fishermen over run their quotas the fishery is shut down and the overage is subtracted from the commercial quota from the following year. But when the recreational fishermen over shoot their 'target' they continue to fish, and generally speaking, their overage is also subtracted from the commercial quota the following year."

Opposition to the proposed legislation exists even within the user group that stands to gain the most. One recreational fishing advocate, who sits on the Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Advisory Committee, disagrees with the principle of the Right To Fish Act in a letter recently posted on the recreational angler web site GoFishNC.com.

"I have no 'right' to fish for anything in the manner or time that I decree," he writes. "I do enjoy a privilege to fish recreationally granted me by the state of NC as long as I follow the rules and regulations set out by the state. Those rules were made to protect the fishery and at the same time were done to extend the privilege of enjoyment or commercial utilization to as many and at an optimum level that could be reasonably be done."