November 24, 2025 • 23 mins
Representative Criag Lipscomb has been talking with the Alabama Marine Police about the increase in permit activity after the boating accident on Smith Lake.
Tournament fishermen feel "under attack" even though this permit has been in place for years. The main reason they feel under attack is due to lack of enforcement.
Rep. Lipscomb is working to get the wording, parameters and verbiage changed in an effort to help public safety and tournaments in the state.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Tournament fishing in the state of Alabama feels like it's
under attack, but that's not necessarily the case. A recent
social media post got tournament fishermen in an uproar over
a permit. I saw this firsthand at a local tournament
that I was a part of in the permitting process.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I actually had zero clue.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
That there was a permitting process to throw or hold
a tournament in the state of Alabama. Representative Craig Lipscomb
is going to join us today and he's been talking
with the Marine Police and Aaliyah, the Alabama Law Enforcement
agency about this permit process to hold a tournament. What
does it mean for tournament anglers, what does it mean
(00:50):
for organizers, the size, what are the issues that come
from this? And are the Marine Police solely acting in
the matter of safety? This permit has supposedly been around
for decades.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, that seems to be the case. I've not looked
into the code to see when that when that existing
bit of information was applied to Alabama law, but it
seems that it must have been several decades ago. Currently,
as you know, we had that terrible accident that occurred
on Smith Lake, and I think that opened up everyone's eyes.
(01:29):
And then I'm sure someone asked the question, I don't
know who that would be, as to are you guys
not watching over these tournaments referring to a Leah and
and I suppose they were like, well, yes we are.
And I guess one thing led to another. Here's the
permit process that they've pulled up, and and they have
(01:50):
some discretion from what I saw in the in the
in the Alabama Code was that they are in charge of,
you know, creating and enforcing those rules. So that's essentially
what we're trying to do right now is to create
some common sense rules that will allow them to do
their job and not overly burden everyone who's trying to
(02:14):
put on these events.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
So is this a reactionary thing to the smith Lake
voting accident, because I've heard other people say this is
just a retaliatory act with the slot limit that was
proposed and was widely criticized that ultimately got shot down.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
No, I think we're looking at two very different things.
The slot limit primarily dealt with a different entity than
the Marine Patrol. So what we're dealing with now is
primarily the Smithlake issue being reflected in the need to
fill out these permits so that the Marine Patrol can
(02:55):
ensure that they've got enough people staffed to to watch
over these events and make sure that people are being
safe and doing the things they need to do.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay, so let's just get everybody caught up that might
be new to the podcast, maybe don't live in the
state of Alabama, and they're not one hundred percent sure
what the Smith Lake accident is. There was a Major
League Fishing event MLF, commonly known as it was a
Toyota Series no tackle Warehouse Invitational series, and a bass
(03:24):
boat collided with a striper charter, which ultimately took the
lives of several people, injuring a couple others. That driver
of the bass boat has been arrested and charged. He's
also going to go through a civil lawsuit at some
point after the criminal case takes place. All these things
(03:45):
kind of culminate to I'm sure Major League Fishing filled
out any sort of permit that they needed to have
that tournament. The question is was their adequate patrol by
the Alabama Marine Police and at that event.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well, you know, I don't know that I can confirm
or deny if they had adequate people at the event.
I just don't have that information. I think what we're
trying to deal with at the moment is how to
ensure that future events are as safe as they possibly
can be. And that's I think really what we're trying
(04:24):
to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Hereay Craig, you've been awesome and trying to kind of
bridge the gap, so to say, from the everyday person,
somebody like myself, just to constituent to be able to
talk to the people who make the decisions because.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You are a representative of the state of Alabama.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Basically, a lot of people are freaking out in the
fishing community because they feel like this is going to
go after your local bass clubs that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Might have a night tournament of five to ten boats.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It goes after some of your Tuesday nighters, or your
Friday nighters, or your Saturday day tournament of local bass
clubs that may have fifteen boats. Is there a conversation
where it's less than fifty boats, it's not a big deal.
If it's more than fifty boats, you have to have
a permit, and are they planning on having these staffed
(05:15):
with marine police? If it's upwards of one hundred.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, that's definitely something that we're trying to figure out.
There was some discussion as to if there was a
limit pre existing, and I really don't know if that
is the case or not. What I do know, and
I hope you'll forgive me if you hear some bills
in the background. My office is rather near a church
(05:40):
and we're at the top of the hour, and so
you were getting all kinds of ecclesiastical background noise at
the moment. But I think what we're trying to do
right now with the with the Marine Patrol is figure
out what is going to be that limit. Is that
limit going to be something like twenty five fifty one hundred?
(06:03):
Once upon a time someone mentioned the word one hundred,
but that seems kind of that that seems larger than
what I think they would have permitted. What that number
is going to be, I don't know. That is purely
at the discretion of the Marine Patrol, because they have
that ability to do so, unless we were to do
(06:24):
something legislatively to change that. I don't know that we
necessarily want to do anything legislatively because there's not really
a reason to do so, because we're all acting in
pretty good faith. At the moment, and I hate to
overregulate anybody.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
No, and I'm right there with you. I don't love
the fact that this feels like a control grab to
some people that loved a tournament fish And based on
the things that we talked about earlier, there's a lot
of tournament fishermen that feel like over the last year
or so, that being a tournament fisherman is a bad thing,
that they're under attack all the time, that there's a
(07:01):
lot of blame being placed on them. That's the feeling
that a general tournament fisherman in the state of Alabama has.
I'm glad you brought up the legislation side, because when
this broke initially, you heard people saying, just remember this
when you go to the polls.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I don't think people.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Really understand that the person who oversees the fresh Water
and Fisheries Department, that's not a elected position.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
It's an appointed position.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Correct. Yeah, So I mean when I think, and I
don't disagree with that comment, you should always remember things
like this when you do go to the polls, but
not so much in the regard that, as you said,
you can't unelect or elect these individuals.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Right It's not like you're going to go to the
polls and you're going to see that this person is
up for the chairman of the Fisheries Department or whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
That's right. But what you can do is you can
when you go to the voting booth, you need to
look and make sure that the people who you're trying
to elect represent your values. And those people who represent
your values, whether you're a best fisherman or whatever it
is that you enjoy doing, you need to make sure
that your elected officials, you know, have got your voice. Well.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
We also know that sometimes when you ask a question
of like, well do you hunt, do you fish? Are
you because even just regular fishermen don't always align well
with tournament fishermen. They don't love the fact that they
see these votes constantly ripping it up and down the
lake and doing all these things. Even though I do
tournaments all the time and I can appreciate what tournaments do,
not everybody is always in the same line. And sometimes
(08:41):
a politician, I think you know this that some politicians
will say to your face, yes, I believe in this,
you will vote them in based on that good faith,
and then they do the opposite.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean that happens all the time. There's nothing
to be done about it. I mean, that's the nature
of the beast, you know. I suppose you could say
it's biblical that someone is known by the fruit that
they're that they bear. So what you have to do
is you have to especially if you're re electing someone,
you have to look and see have they been working
diligently to support the causes and do the things that
(09:14):
you elected them to do in the first place. Certainly
when you're considering bringing someone new to the table to
represent you, that's a much more difficult thing to determine.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I know, over the last year or so, the idea
of permitting tournaments on lakes has come up in different conversations,
and the main reason is a lot of people were
worried about the fish quality, and this is why I
brought up the slot limit earlier. They were worried about
the fish quality, and a lot of people said, well,
it's because of the number of tournaments that we have.
(09:44):
And if you look at the Cusa Rivers specifically, there
are several lakes on the Kusa River where you see
tournaments that happen sometimes to a day, even upwards of
three depending on where they're going out of on Logan Martin,
on Neelie Henry, different popular lakes, and people thought that
this was kind of a correlation between the two. You're
(10:06):
saying it's more of a safety thing. When you've talked
to the Marine police, have they shared with you that
this is purely reactionary to making sure that people are
safe on the water. And with tournaments we have an
increased amount of boats.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The Marine Police don't give one flying fart how many
fish you catch. They just don't. They don't care about that.
The only thing they care about is the safety of
the people who are on the water. The people who
care about quantities of fish and quality of fish, etc.
That's gonna be conservation. That's not a Leah, that's not
your marine police. And right now the permitting issue is
(10:45):
sitting solely in the shopping cart of the Marine Police
and the conservation has nothing to do with this particular matter.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Thank you for clearing that up, because I know some
people will have some certain questions about that. Sticking with
the Marine Police and the permit, the permit says that
you have to fill it out fifteen days ahead of
time and a lot of people are worried that, you know,
while I don't really know how to fill out that
form in time, and it seems like it's a little
more self serving for them to be just up in
(11:18):
arms about it other than just doing the form. But
it is free for somebody to put this out there.
So if you want to run a tournament trail, you
should be able to run a tournament trail. And if
they're saying all you have to do is let us
know where it is, to me, that shows that they're
more interested in just making sure that they have proper
staff for whatever reason they need to have people there.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I always err on the side that it's based on safety.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, I think from my understanding and talking with a
marine police, it looks like they when they scheduled their
staff to their respective post, it's about a it's a
thirty day window. They're working on a thirty day schedule,
so even the fifteen days notice kind of makes that
(12:05):
scheduling difficult. It makes it more organic, and I think
they're being rather kind in that regard. Also, I think
we have to also remember that this that permit, from
what I can tell, is rather old. It's been there
quite some time, and since they haven't really utilized it,
it really probably didn't serve the purposes that it should
(12:28):
have served and maybe didn't look the way that it
should have looked. There's and they're redoing the permit a
couple of things that I asked them to do. I said, listen,
it would be great if if you redid the permit,
so it was a little more common sensical that it
took away some language that was confusing. I think it
(12:50):
needs to be a fillable form online, something that my
first thought process was, Hey, can we can we just
email you the form? And then I thought, no, we
can do better than that. I mean, technologically it's not
difficult to put a fillable form online. So I think
they're in the process of doing that, and so we're
(13:10):
trying to stringline the process. We're trying to make it
as easy as possible. Getting away from permitting is going
to be a difficult thing because it's just it's a
necessity to ensure that we've got proper coverage by the
Marine Patrol. But we want it to be as simple
as possible.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So I'm hearing some really good things. What I'm hearing
from you is it sounds like Aliyah and the Marine
Patrol are actively interested in making sure that whatever form
they put out, however the permitting needs to go. They
seem like they're operating in the sense that they want
fishermen to be able to enjoy the lakes and to
(13:48):
be able to do tournaments. Is there a worry or
has there been a conversation of what kind of tournaments
would get shut down or wouldn't be allowed a permit?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Know that there's anyone who would be denied a permit,
But I think the question at hand is what is
going to be the threshold that would trigger you having
to get a permit? And what that number, what that
science tournament is going to be, I don't know yet.
I know that the number twenty five has been tossed around.
(14:21):
I think that is probably a bit low in my opinion.
I'd rather see that closer to fifty. But I don't
get to make those decisions. So at some point we're
going to find out from the Marine Police what they
think is, you know, appropriate for them to manage. You know,
it's really all about their staff.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And I've been in a couple different high level tournaments.
I won't say pro because I'm certainly not a professional,
but with Major League Fishing, who runs weekend tournaments all
the way through some of the top tier, with the
Bass Pro Tour, which fishes lakes like Gunnersville, Wheeler Lake, Pickwick,
you fall different lakes that we have in the state.
(15:00):
Lay Lake is won Logan, Martin, Neely, Henry. The list
is endless. I could go on and on. And they
were a part of the Smith Lake event that took place,
being a part of their bfls, which is kind of
their weekend series that they have. Even this year, you
could tell that the numbers in the Bama Division were
down from what they've been the last couple of years,
(15:22):
where I think on the Alabama River we had eighty boats.
I think some other ones we had over one hundred.
I like your idea of fifty because I think most
basque clubs who were ultimately scared by this permitting, thinking
that they're not going to get a permit, most of
them have nowhere more than twenty five boats, right.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And let's also keep in mind that if you're going
to have a tournament that is maybe greater than twenty five,
thirty thirty five, whatever that case may be, you probably
know you're going to be having a tournament well ahead
of time, so that fifteen day period to fill out
the paperwork and we're talking about it is simple. It'll
take five minutes to fill out this form and hit send.
(16:05):
That's all they're asking you to do. Most tournaments are
going to have enough premonition to be able to know
that I've got an event happening next month. We're going
to get or done. What we're trying, what I'm trying
to accomplish, is these guys who on a Monday have decided, hey,
(16:25):
let's put on a fifteen or twenty man tournament, and
now all of a sudden they're outside of the window
filling in a permit. Those guys should realistically be able
to continue to have that tournament, because first of all,
it's small. You know, it shouldn't have require a great
deal of oversight, and of course they just don't have
(16:46):
the foresight that the big guys do.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I think there's some worry though, with the permitting side
of let's say a Tuesday night or so, you're just
weekday tournament that a guy puts up on Facebook and says, hey,
this is the one that I want to do. You
don't always know how many boats are going to show up.
I've been in a few where you have five boats.
I've been to others where you have forty boats. Aliyah
(17:10):
and the marine patrol are probably going to freak out
unless they have a number attached to it. Where now
that tournament director quote unquote, the person who organized it
put it on social media, has to say, listen, I
have to cap it at twenty five boats.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
I think we have to think about about the proper
way to handle things. And if you're assuming, and I
think historically speaking, you've probably done a tournament or two
if you're putting one on. So if you know you
could have one hundred boats, go ahead and do a
permit for one hundred boats, and if you have twenty
people show up, you're covered, you know. I think you
(17:47):
just need to assume the worst case scenario in that
particular case.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
See, I think this is all great information because there's
so many people that jump on social media. They see
a headline and all they want to do is pound
the keyboard and say that this is a problem and
I can't believe this.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, the best thing that we can do is just
get that information out to all the people who are
putting on tournaments, especially those who are doing large tournaments,
and by large, I would say in that let's just
use an arbitrary number like thirty. Let's just say, if you,
if you, if you, if you think you're gonna have
thirty boats or more, go ahead and fill out the form,
get it done, get it over with. It's super simple.
(18:23):
It's not a big deal, or at least it will
be less of a deal here in the future. Currently
you're going to have to download the form, fill it out,
scan it, email it to the chief, and you have
to go about it that way. But it will it
will simplify in the near future. You got to remember
this Marine Patrol is just as mad about this as
you are. Okay, they they don't they don't want to
(18:46):
go through the permitting process. This is a headache for them.
You know, all of this extra regulation is burdensome to
them and to you, but it is, you know, it
is a statutory issue that they're have to navigate through.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And that's obviously that's evident. That's evident because if we're
just quote unquote finding out about the permit, now, that
means that it wasn't really pushed to be a big issue,
And I think it goes back to the state is
operating in good faith, that tournaments are safe, that they're
run effectively, and that people know exactly what they're doing.
(19:23):
I mean, we're we're treating our waterways a lot like
a roadway. If we have increased boats and it's fourth
of July and you want to put on a two
hundred boat tournament. Aliyah in the Marine Patrol want to.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Know about that.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
But it seems like they've been operating in good faith.
The problem is once you have a catastrophic accident like
happened on Smith Lake. Now all the eyes, all the spotlights,
every magnifying glass comes out, and people start to look
back and they go, yeah, but did we know about it?
And why wasn't anybody there, or why wasn't it staffed correctly?
(19:56):
Did we not have this permit? Now you're starting to
see some heads could possibly roll. People are getting chewed
out in the division that really are kind of like, well,
we were operating in good faith, so now we have
to be hard on everything.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, that's always the case. You know, something bad happens, Ever,
ruin's the good time? For everybody, right, whether they should
have been doing this permit application all along, for the
past thirty or forty years, however long it's been in place, Yeah,
probably they should have. We wouldn't be having this conversation
today if that had been the case, because people wouldn't
(20:31):
know what's what.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
But you know, but I don't think a permit will
just keep the accidents completely down. I think accidents are
still going to happen.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
No, I'm certainly not suggesting that the accidents are still
going to happen, but just as far as the sake
of filling out the permit, if we'd have been if
everybody would have been doing this all along, for you know,
for all these years, we wouldn't be here today talking
about having to do permits because everybody would be used
to it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, yea. It definitely feels like.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's and I've said this about a couple different entities
over the last year that we've seen with the tournament
fishing side, but it feels like there's a little bit
of a pr problem when it comes to the government
of Alabama. It seems like things just get thrown out
there and it's like, no, this has always been the case,
and you just want to be able to sit there
(21:24):
and go, hey, we need to have an actual conversation
here to really figure out what's adequate in what works.
I'm happy to hear that that's happening with your office
as a representative of Alabama and the Marine Police, because
I do think that there is a common ground that
we can ultimately get to have they given you a
timeline for potentially when they think this is going to happen,
(21:44):
or is this something that has to go to the
legislative route, hit the floor, be voted on, and then
act it in.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Well, thank god, this is not something that has to
go to the floor of the house, because you know
how legislation is. It's like walking through mud. But it
is definitely something they can handle within their agency. It
is something that they are probably working on them as
we speak. And I couldn't tell you it's gonna be
(22:12):
done tomorrow or the next day, but I know that
they're actively working to get it done.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
It's also important to point out that as easy as
it is for them to say Nope, going forward, you
have to fill out this permit, you have to do this,
it's important for people to know that it doesn't require
any legislation for them to say that they're going to
do that. It doesn't require any legislation for them to
change their mind and do something different.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Correct, that's correct, that's correct. You know that they can
unilaterally make their own rules. That's the way the current
statute reads. And some people would say that's a bad thing,
but really it's not. It's a good thing because they
know best how to run their own agency. They don't
need eggheads like me telling them how to be police.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
And that's the majority of agencies that we have operating,
not only in this state but other states.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean you have this typical case.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You hire people to manage effectively based on what they know,
how long they've been doing it, in their expertise, and
we have to trust that they're going to act in
the best possible way. When people don't, that's when we
find out. Representative Craig Lipscomb thank you very much for
jumping on with us.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Absolutely, it's been my pleasure.
Tournament fishing in the state of Alabama feels like it's
under attack, but that's not necessarily the case. A recent
social media post got tournament fishermen in an uproar over
a permit. I saw this firsthand at a local tournament
that I was a part of in the permitting process.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I actually had zero clue.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
That there was a permitting process to throw or hold
a tournament in the state of Alabama. Representative Craig Lipscomb
is going to join us today and he's been talking
with the Marine Police and Aaliyah, the Alabama Law Enforcement
agency about this permit process to hold a tournament. What
does it mean for tournament anglers, what does it mean
(00:50):
for organizers, the size, what are the issues that come
from this? And are the Marine Police solely acting in
the matter of safety? This permit has supposedly been around
for decades.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, that seems to be the case. I've not looked
into the code to see when that when that existing
bit of information was applied to Alabama law, but it
seems that it must have been several decades ago. Currently,
as you know, we had that terrible accident that occurred
on Smith Lake, and I think that opened up everyone's eyes.
(01:29):
And then I'm sure someone asked the question, I don't
know who that would be, as to are you guys
not watching over these tournaments referring to a Leah and
and I suppose they were like, well, yes we are.
And I guess one thing led to another. Here's the
permit process that they've pulled up, and and they have
(01:50):
some discretion from what I saw in the in the
in the Alabama Code was that they are in charge of,
you know, creating and enforcing those rules. So that's essentially
what we're trying to do right now is to create
some common sense rules that will allow them to do
their job and not overly burden everyone who's trying to
(02:14):
put on these events.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
So is this a reactionary thing to the smith Lake
voting accident, because I've heard other people say this is
just a retaliatory act with the slot limit that was
proposed and was widely criticized that ultimately got shot down.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
No, I think we're looking at two very different things.
The slot limit primarily dealt with a different entity than
the Marine Patrol. So what we're dealing with now is
primarily the Smithlake issue being reflected in the need to
fill out these permits so that the Marine Patrol can
(02:55):
ensure that they've got enough people staffed to to watch
over these events and make sure that people are being
safe and doing the things they need to do.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay, so let's just get everybody caught up that might
be new to the podcast, maybe don't live in the
state of Alabama, and they're not one hundred percent sure
what the Smith Lake accident is. There was a Major
League Fishing event MLF, commonly known as it was a
Toyota Series no tackle Warehouse Invitational series, and a bass
(03:24):
boat collided with a striper charter, which ultimately took the
lives of several people, injuring a couple others. That driver
of the bass boat has been arrested and charged. He's
also going to go through a civil lawsuit at some
point after the criminal case takes place. All these things
(03:45):
kind of culminate to I'm sure Major League Fishing filled
out any sort of permit that they needed to have
that tournament. The question is was their adequate patrol by
the Alabama Marine Police and at that event.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well, you know, I don't know that I can confirm
or deny if they had adequate people at the event.
I just don't have that information. I think what we're
trying to deal with at the moment is how to
ensure that future events are as safe as they possibly
can be. And that's I think really what we're trying
(04:24):
to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Hereay Craig, you've been awesome and trying to kind of
bridge the gap, so to say, from the everyday person,
somebody like myself, just to constituent to be able to
talk to the people who make the decisions because.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You are a representative of the state of Alabama.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Basically, a lot of people are freaking out in the
fishing community because they feel like this is going to
go after your local bass clubs that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Might have a night tournament of five to ten boats.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It goes after some of your Tuesday nighters, or your
Friday nighters, or your Saturday day tournament of local bass
clubs that may have fifteen boats. Is there a conversation
where it's less than fifty boats, it's not a big deal.
If it's more than fifty boats, you have to have
a permit, and are they planning on having these staffed
(05:15):
with marine police? If it's upwards of one hundred.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, that's definitely something that we're trying to figure out.
There was some discussion as to if there was a
limit pre existing, and I really don't know if that
is the case or not. What I do know, and
I hope you'll forgive me if you hear some bills
in the background. My office is rather near a church
(05:40):
and we're at the top of the hour, and so
you were getting all kinds of ecclesiastical background noise at
the moment. But I think what we're trying to do
right now with the with the Marine Patrol is figure
out what is going to be that limit. Is that
limit going to be something like twenty five fifty one hundred?
(06:03):
Once upon a time someone mentioned the word one hundred,
but that seems kind of that that seems larger than
what I think they would have permitted. What that number
is going to be, I don't know. That is purely
at the discretion of the Marine Patrol, because they have
that ability to do so, unless we were to do
(06:24):
something legislatively to change that. I don't know that we
necessarily want to do anything legislatively because there's not really
a reason to do so, because we're all acting in
pretty good faith. At the moment, and I hate to
overregulate anybody.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
No, and I'm right there with you. I don't love
the fact that this feels like a control grab to
some people that loved a tournament fish And based on
the things that we talked about earlier, there's a lot
of tournament fishermen that feel like over the last year
or so, that being a tournament fisherman is a bad thing,
that they're under attack all the time, that there's a
(07:01):
lot of blame being placed on them. That's the feeling
that a general tournament fisherman in the state of Alabama has.
I'm glad you brought up the legislation side, because when
this broke initially, you heard people saying, just remember this
when you go to the polls.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I don't think people.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Really understand that the person who oversees the fresh Water
and Fisheries Department, that's not a elected position.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
It's an appointed position.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Correct. Yeah, So I mean when I think, and I
don't disagree with that comment, you should always remember things
like this when you do go to the polls, but
not so much in the regard that, as you said,
you can't unelect or elect these individuals.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Right It's not like you're going to go to the
polls and you're going to see that this person is
up for the chairman of the Fisheries Department or whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
That's right. But what you can do is you can
when you go to the voting booth, you need to
look and make sure that the people who you're trying
to elect represent your values. And those people who represent
your values, whether you're a best fisherman or whatever it
is that you enjoy doing, you need to make sure
that your elected officials, you know, have got your voice. Well.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
We also know that sometimes when you ask a question
of like, well do you hunt, do you fish? Are
you because even just regular fishermen don't always align well
with tournament fishermen. They don't love the fact that they
see these votes constantly ripping it up and down the
lake and doing all these things. Even though I do
tournaments all the time and I can appreciate what tournaments do,
not everybody is always in the same line. And sometimes
(08:41):
a politician, I think you know this that some politicians
will say to your face, yes, I believe in this,
you will vote them in based on that good faith,
and then they do the opposite.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean that happens all the time. There's nothing
to be done about it. I mean, that's the nature
of the beast, you know. I suppose you could say
it's biblical that someone is known by the fruit that
they're that they bear. So what you have to do
is you have to especially if you're re electing someone,
you have to look and see have they been working
diligently to support the causes and do the things that
(09:14):
you elected them to do in the first place. Certainly
when you're considering bringing someone new to the table to
represent you, that's a much more difficult thing to determine.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I know, over the last year or so, the idea
of permitting tournaments on lakes has come up in different conversations,
and the main reason is a lot of people were
worried about the fish quality, and this is why I
brought up the slot limit earlier. They were worried about
the fish quality, and a lot of people said, well,
it's because of the number of tournaments that we have.
(09:44):
And if you look at the Cusa Rivers specifically, there
are several lakes on the Kusa River where you see
tournaments that happen sometimes to a day, even upwards of
three depending on where they're going out of on Logan Martin,
on Neelie Henry, different popular lakes, and people thought that
this was kind of a correlation between the two. You're
(10:06):
saying it's more of a safety thing. When you've talked
to the Marine police, have they shared with you that
this is purely reactionary to making sure that people are
safe on the water. And with tournaments we have an
increased amount of boats.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The Marine Police don't give one flying fart how many
fish you catch. They just don't. They don't care about that.
The only thing they care about is the safety of
the people who are on the water. The people who
care about quantities of fish and quality of fish, etc.
That's gonna be conservation. That's not a Leah, that's not
your marine police. And right now the permitting issue is
(10:45):
sitting solely in the shopping cart of the Marine Police
and the conservation has nothing to do with this particular matter.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Thank you for clearing that up, because I know some
people will have some certain questions about that. Sticking with
the Marine Police and the permit, the permit says that
you have to fill it out fifteen days ahead of
time and a lot of people are worried that, you know,
while I don't really know how to fill out that
form in time, and it seems like it's a little
more self serving for them to be just up in
(11:18):
arms about it other than just doing the form. But
it is free for somebody to put this out there.
So if you want to run a tournament trail, you
should be able to run a tournament trail. And if
they're saying all you have to do is let us
know where it is, to me, that shows that they're
more interested in just making sure that they have proper
staff for whatever reason they need to have people there.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I always err on the side that it's based on safety.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, I think from my understanding and talking with a
marine police, it looks like they when they scheduled their
staff to their respective post, it's about a it's a
thirty day window. They're working on a thirty day schedule,
so even the fifteen days notice kind of makes that
(12:05):
scheduling difficult. It makes it more organic, and I think
they're being rather kind in that regard. Also, I think
we have to also remember that this that permit, from
what I can tell, is rather old. It's been there
quite some time, and since they haven't really utilized it,
it really probably didn't serve the purposes that it should
(12:28):
have served and maybe didn't look the way that it
should have looked. There's and they're redoing the permit a
couple of things that I asked them to do. I said, listen,
it would be great if if you redid the permit,
so it was a little more common sensical that it
took away some language that was confusing. I think it
(12:50):
needs to be a fillable form online, something that my
first thought process was, Hey, can we can we just
email you the form? And then I thought, no, we
can do better than that. I mean, technologically it's not
difficult to put a fillable form online. So I think
they're in the process of doing that, and so we're
(13:10):
trying to stringline the process. We're trying to make it
as easy as possible. Getting away from permitting is going
to be a difficult thing because it's just it's a
necessity to ensure that we've got proper coverage by the
Marine Patrol. But we want it to be as simple
as possible.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So I'm hearing some really good things. What I'm hearing
from you is it sounds like Aliyah and the Marine
Patrol are actively interested in making sure that whatever form
they put out, however the permitting needs to go. They
seem like they're operating in the sense that they want
fishermen to be able to enjoy the lakes and to
(13:48):
be able to do tournaments. Is there a worry or
has there been a conversation of what kind of tournaments
would get shut down or wouldn't be allowed a permit?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Know that there's anyone who would be denied a permit,
But I think the question at hand is what is
going to be the threshold that would trigger you having
to get a permit? And what that number, what that
science tournament is going to be, I don't know yet.
I know that the number twenty five has been tossed around.
(14:21):
I think that is probably a bit low in my opinion.
I'd rather see that closer to fifty. But I don't
get to make those decisions. So at some point we're
going to find out from the Marine Police what they
think is, you know, appropriate for them to manage. You know,
it's really all about their staff.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And I've been in a couple different high level tournaments.
I won't say pro because I'm certainly not a professional,
but with Major League Fishing, who runs weekend tournaments all
the way through some of the top tier, with the
Bass Pro Tour, which fishes lakes like Gunnersville, Wheeler Lake, Pickwick,
you fall different lakes that we have in the state.
(15:00):
Lay Lake is won Logan, Martin, Neely, Henry. The list
is endless. I could go on and on. And they
were a part of the Smith Lake event that took place,
being a part of their bfls, which is kind of
their weekend series that they have. Even this year, you
could tell that the numbers in the Bama Division were
down from what they've been the last couple of years,
(15:22):
where I think on the Alabama River we had eighty boats.
I think some other ones we had over one hundred.
I like your idea of fifty because I think most
basque clubs who were ultimately scared by this permitting, thinking
that they're not going to get a permit, most of
them have nowhere more than twenty five boats, right.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And let's also keep in mind that if you're going
to have a tournament that is maybe greater than twenty five,
thirty thirty five, whatever that case may be, you probably
know you're going to be having a tournament well ahead
of time, so that fifteen day period to fill out
the paperwork and we're talking about it is simple. It'll
take five minutes to fill out this form and hit send.
(16:05):
That's all they're asking you to do. Most tournaments are
going to have enough premonition to be able to know
that I've got an event happening next month. We're going
to get or done. What we're trying, what I'm trying
to accomplish, is these guys who on a Monday have decided, hey,
(16:25):
let's put on a fifteen or twenty man tournament, and
now all of a sudden they're outside of the window
filling in a permit. Those guys should realistically be able
to continue to have that tournament, because first of all,
it's small. You know, it shouldn't have require a great
deal of oversight, and of course they just don't have
(16:46):
the foresight that the big guys do.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I think there's some worry though, with the permitting side
of let's say a Tuesday night or so, you're just
weekday tournament that a guy puts up on Facebook and says, hey,
this is the one that I want to do. You
don't always know how many boats are going to show up.
I've been in a few where you have five boats.
I've been to others where you have forty boats. Aliyah
(17:10):
and the marine patrol are probably going to freak out
unless they have a number attached to it. Where now
that tournament director quote unquote, the person who organized it
put it on social media, has to say, listen, I
have to cap it at twenty five boats.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
I think we have to think about about the proper
way to handle things. And if you're assuming, and I
think historically speaking, you've probably done a tournament or two
if you're putting one on. So if you know you
could have one hundred boats, go ahead and do a
permit for one hundred boats, and if you have twenty
people show up, you're covered, you know. I think you
(17:47):
just need to assume the worst case scenario in that
particular case.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
See, I think this is all great information because there's
so many people that jump on social media. They see
a headline and all they want to do is pound
the keyboard and say that this is a problem and
I can't believe this.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, the best thing that we can do is just
get that information out to all the people who are
putting on tournaments, especially those who are doing large tournaments,
and by large, I would say in that let's just
use an arbitrary number like thirty. Let's just say, if you,
if you, if you, if you think you're gonna have
thirty boats or more, go ahead and fill out the form,
get it done, get it over with. It's super simple.
(18:23):
It's not a big deal, or at least it will
be less of a deal here in the future. Currently
you're going to have to download the form, fill it out,
scan it, email it to the chief, and you have
to go about it that way. But it will it
will simplify in the near future. You got to remember
this Marine Patrol is just as mad about this as
you are. Okay, they they don't they don't want to
(18:46):
go through the permitting process. This is a headache for them.
You know, all of this extra regulation is burdensome to
them and to you, but it is, you know, it
is a statutory issue that they're have to navigate through.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And that's obviously that's evident. That's evident because if we're
just quote unquote finding out about the permit, now, that
means that it wasn't really pushed to be a big issue,
And I think it goes back to the state is
operating in good faith, that tournaments are safe, that they're
run effectively, and that people know exactly what they're doing.
(19:23):
I mean, we're we're treating our waterways a lot like
a roadway. If we have increased boats and it's fourth
of July and you want to put on a two
hundred boat tournament. Aliyah in the Marine Patrol want to.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Know about that.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
But it seems like they've been operating in good faith.
The problem is once you have a catastrophic accident like
happened on Smith Lake. Now all the eyes, all the spotlights,
every magnifying glass comes out, and people start to look
back and they go, yeah, but did we know about it?
And why wasn't anybody there, or why wasn't it staffed correctly?
(19:56):
Did we not have this permit? Now you're starting to
see some heads could possibly roll. People are getting chewed
out in the division that really are kind of like, well,
we were operating in good faith, so now we have
to be hard on everything.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, that's always the case. You know, something bad happens, Ever,
ruin's the good time? For everybody, right, whether they should
have been doing this permit application all along, for the
past thirty or forty years, however long it's been in place, Yeah,
probably they should have. We wouldn't be having this conversation
today if that had been the case, because people wouldn't
(20:31):
know what's what.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
But you know, but I don't think a permit will
just keep the accidents completely down. I think accidents are
still going to happen.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
No, I'm certainly not suggesting that the accidents are still
going to happen, but just as far as the sake
of filling out the permit, if we'd have been if
everybody would have been doing this all along, for you know,
for all these years, we wouldn't be here today talking
about having to do permits because everybody would be used
to it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, yea. It definitely feels like.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's and I've said this about a couple different entities
over the last year that we've seen with the tournament
fishing side, but it feels like there's a little bit
of a pr problem when it comes to the government
of Alabama. It seems like things just get thrown out
there and it's like, no, this has always been the case,
and you just want to be able to sit there
(21:24):
and go, hey, we need to have an actual conversation
here to really figure out what's adequate in what works.
I'm happy to hear that that's happening with your office
as a representative of Alabama and the Marine Police, because
I do think that there is a common ground that
we can ultimately get to have they given you a
timeline for potentially when they think this is going to happen,
(21:44):
or is this something that has to go to the
legislative route, hit the floor, be voted on, and then
act it in.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Well, thank god, this is not something that has to
go to the floor of the house, because you know
how legislation is. It's like walking through mud. But it
is definitely something they can handle within their agency. It
is something that they are probably working on them as
we speak. And I couldn't tell you it's gonna be
(22:12):
done tomorrow or the next day, but I know that
they're actively working to get it done.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
It's also important to point out that as easy as
it is for them to say Nope, going forward, you
have to fill out this permit, you have to do this,
it's important for people to know that it doesn't require
any legislation for them to say that they're going to
do that. It doesn't require any legislation for them to
change their mind and do something different.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Correct, that's correct, that's correct. You know that they can
unilaterally make their own rules. That's the way the current
statute reads. And some people would say that's a bad thing,
but really it's not. It's a good thing because they
know best how to run their own agency. They don't
need eggheads like me telling them how to be police.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
And that's the majority of agencies that we have operating,
not only in this state but other states.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean you have this typical case.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You hire people to manage effectively based on what they know,
how long they've been doing it, in their expertise, and
we have to trust that they're going to act in
the best possible way. When people don't, that's when we
find out. Representative Craig Lipscomb thank you very much for
jumping on with us.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Absolutely, it's been my pleasure.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.