Odds are most of us have seen the license plates: “Louisiana, Sportsman’s Paradise.”
Or should that be: “Louisiana, Sportsmen Unwelcome”?
That sure seems to be the message delivered by the state House of Representatives when, in mid-April, it voted that landowners who control 80 percent of the state’s productive coastal marsh can tell recreational fishermen: Stay out!
From the perspective of coastal sport-fishing enthusiasts, Louisiana is unique in many respects. On the plus side, there’s the mind-bogglingly vast productive coastal marsh, 3 million acres of it. Some of the best fishing in the world for redfish, seatrout, flounder, largemouth bass and other game fish attracts anglers from all over to these estuaries.
But it turns out there’s a monster in this marsh that has recently begun rearing a very ugly…
