EDITORIAL: Port is not a good place to complain about fishing

If there is one constant in the life and times of Port Washington, it’s fishing. Port was a primitive fishing camp and then a village organized around fishing long before it was incorporated as a city, and two centuries later, fishing is still an essential social, recreational and economic element of the city.

In light of that oft-told narrative, it was interesting to note some recent social media grumbling about fishing in Port Washington.

One commenter complained about people fishing at Coal Dock Park and usurping space preferred by walkers. The gist of the gripe was that the anglers were crowding the park dock and walkway, were messy, threatened passersby with reckless casting, should be restricted to a smaller area and, for good measure, be made to pay for their parking spaces with parking meters.

Hearty venting is a cherished social media privilege, and nurturing a warm and fuzzy feeling about the city’s fishing heritage is not a requisite for Port Washington residency, but the indictment of the fishermen ignores the fact that they have as much right to space in Coal Dock Park and other public lakefront areas as anyone.

The reasons this is true are a few paragraphs away, but first a bit more of the fishing narrative. Fishing from the former coal boat dock in Coal Dock Park is a fairly recent phenomenon, since the park did not exist until 2013. Even the fish being caught there can be called recent; they are mostly salmon and trout species stocked in Lake Michigan annually by the Department of Natural Resources.

Back in the early days of Port’s commercial fishing era, the catch was native lake trout and whitefish, which were so abundant that, as recorded in historic photos, fishermen working in their pound-net boats stood knee deep in fish they had lifted from trap nets along the shore.

The journey from those halcyon days to this age of anglers casting from Coal Dock Park was marked by chaos in the Lake Michigan ecosystem. The first deadly invasive species, the lamprey eel, all but wiped out the lake trout population. In a blemish on the perceived nobility of fishermen, overfishing contributed to the disaster. 

Subsequent invaders, including the quagga mussels that have taken over the lake by the quadrillions, carried on the decimation, claiming valuable small native fish like the bloater chub and yellow perch as well the larger species. 

The reduction of the perch population to a barely sustainable number was a blow to recreational fishing enthusiasts who in the middle decades of the 20th century flocked to Port Washington to catch the abundant and delicious panfish. 

In the glory days of perch fishing, locals and visitors by the scores lined the docks of the north harbor slip and breakwater shoulder to shoulder with cane poles and hooks baited with minnows (and the Facebook fishing critic thinks a couple dozen people trying to catch a fish at Coal Dock Park is a crowd).

Crowd or not, people fishing there are exercising a right derived from the Public Trust Doctrine that is the basis for the State of Wisconsin’s commitment to public access to navigable waters that belong to everyone.

The state helped pay for the creation of Coal Dock Park, as well as other waterfront improvements in Port Washington, through Coastal Management grants given to the city with the requirement that they be used in ways that provide public access to Lake Michigan, including fishing. 

Money the state distributes through Coastal Management grants comes to the state mainly from the federal government, supported by all tax-paying Americans, including the fishermen who spend time in Coal Dock Park. 

DNR grants that helped the city pay for the marina and launching ramps came with the same proviso for fishing access, which accounts for the amusing juxtaposition observed when folks who arrived on a multimillion-dollar motoryacht that had docked in the inner harbor sipped cocktails on the vessel’s fantail a few feet away from fishermen sitting on the dock watching their bobbers.

Back at Coal Dock Park, fishermen are most numerous in fall when the fish population in the harbor swells during the spawning run, and they can be a diverse lot. On one October day, people in the group could be heard speaking Slavic and Chinese languages, as well as Spanish and English.

On a few mid-summer days, most of the fishing enthusiasts on the park dock are kids in life preservers. They are there to attend one of their summer school classes on a subject that has special importance in this town. 

Yes, Port Washington public schools teach fishing. How fitting.