Gotta Love the Internet: An Anti Spring Ridge Club Club Web Site
By Tom Chandler on Dec 4, 2007 in Fishing Blogs
Thanks to Alex at the iconoclastic Daytripper blog — who’s running a “Stuff That Sucks” series (in opposition to his own “Stuff You Need” posts) — we found ourselves face to face with an Anti-Spring Ridge Club Web site that Underground Tackling Dummy Donny Beaver probably doesn’t love. From their “About” page:
This site is intended to shed light on the activities of the Spring Ridge Club in Central Pennsylvania. The activities of this club are to secure land surrounding PA trout waters and post them for their own use…
We intend to gather support from the public to try to convince the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to change the current legislation to allow stream access to the public to the high water mark of the river, just as it has been done in Montana.
The Underground’s beef with Beaver isn’t with his attempts to post private waters (we’re not in love with that part, but it’s legal). It’s about attempting to illegally restrict legal public access to rivers (and pretending he’s a conservationist for doing it).
It’s a trend we’re going to see a lot more of over the coming years — they’re not making any more rivers.
taku | Dec 4, 2007 | Reply
Unfortunately your right. Here in west Dakota (or Montana depending on your outlook) is seems about every 3-5 years we end up fighting another long court battle over stream access. And every time the Supreme Court finds that the 1972 Constitution is very clear on stream access (bless the hearts of those folks who sheparded that thru the session). Keep banging away at ‘em, and keep the public involved and informed. Good luck in PA! Tom: How many pumps can your pellet gun take??
Alex | Dec 4, 2007 | Reply
Iconoclastic? You trying to get up to Singlebarbed’s Post Grad Reading level?
I’m new to the whole Donny beaver debate. Did a lot of reading on his operations today at work trying to catch up. Scary stuff.
C3C Raine | Dec 4, 2007 | Reply
“beef with Beaver” …did you mean to say that? Perhaps this post would be better off at ‘Buster Wants to Fish’
Tom Chandler | Dec 4, 2007 | Reply
Taku: No kidding. The threatened privatization of a public resource never seems to go away. And the battles are hard for the general public; the benefit to the greedy few is fairly concentrated, while the loss to the public is fairly diffuse (many people experience small dislocation).
In a classic economic sense, the bad guys have more to gain than you have to lose. Still, we keep plugging away.
And the pellet gun is a 900 fps underlever springer, but I think the potential for a wing shot with the thing is fairly limited…
Alex: I’m standing by iconoclastic. And how could Singlebarbed earn a postgraduate readability ranking when he spends all his time on panty raids?
C3C: The Underground takes a back seat to no blog when it comes suggestive alliterative prose. (What’s the ranking now?).
And did you know there’s a Tom Chandler on the Air Force Academy rifle team? Killer shot, and it’s amazing the things you learn when you set up a vanity Google alert…
C3C Raine | Dec 4, 2007 | Reply
Are you serious? That’s pretty cool, and I’m not suprised you have a google alert for all things TC, you’re a nerd…we all have a little google feed about ourselves…it’s just there’s very little news and even then not much is actually about us…
Tom Chandler | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
Serious. He’s probably the best shooter, but he’s also a freshmen, so I don’t think he quite ranks as a human being yet. With a name like that, you’d think he’d be granted automatic C3C status, but such is the way of bureaucracy….
C3C Raine | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
There’s not much they don’t have right now, they get priveleges like they’re candy.
Tom Chandler | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
C3C: we can take it that much has changed in a single year, then, eh? If you run across him, first, be nice (he’s a crack shot after all). And second, let him know he’s got an Internet fan…
Smellslikefish | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
“they’re not making any more rivers.”
But one mighty blow off the top of Mt. Shasta could change that. We may not be around to enjoy it…
Tom Chandler | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
I’d rather the mountain didn’t blow until after the L&T and I sold our other houses…