Georgia lawmakers passed legislation on the last day of this year’s General Assembly session guaranteeing Georgians the right to fish in navigable portions of the state’s rivers and streams.
While the public’s right to fish had been established in Georgia for generations, Gov. Brian Kemp and legislative leaders saw a need to codify it in state law after a property owner along a stretch of the Flint River known as Yellow Jacket Shoals declared fishing from the bank on its side of the river off limits. Four Chimneys LLLP sued the state, accusing the Georgia Department of Natural Resources of failing to enforce the ban.
“[Senate Bill 115] achieved a remarkable amount of clarity of [fishing] rights,” said Gordon Rogers, executive director of Flint Riverkeeper, an Albany-based environmental group that supported the bill. “What remains is where do those rights apply?”
A legislative study committee will begin meeting Oct. 4 to try to answer that question. The first of four meetings the panel has scheduled next month will take place in the small town of Gay, near the area of the Flint River that spawned the controversy.
Mike Worley, president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation, said he hopes the House Study Committee on Fishing Access to Freshwater Resources comes up with legislation giving the state Department of Natural Resources the authority to define what constitutes a navigable stream in Georgia and what does not.
“I would love to see … a map that says, ‘If you want to fish here and it’s green, it’s OK, and the ones that are red are closed to you,’ ” he said.
Worley said it’s clear from the locations of the four upcoming study committee meetings that the issue of fishing rights applies not just to the Flint River but throughout the state. The panel plans to hold two of its meetings in the cold-water trout stream country of the North Georgia mountains and a third in Statesboro, a city through which the Ogeechee River flows.
Rogers said the…
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