Clean our waterways contest.

[RCC]

There is a new contest up to help clean our waterways. Here is a link to that thread.

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/conte...arbage-picked/

I had read a post by canebreaker down on the Mississippi board and he had written that he keeps a bucket in his boat to hold the trash he comes across while fishing. I thought this was a great idea and wanted to start doing the same. If you are out fishing, you never have to come home empty handed. As many of as as there are on crappie.com, we should be able to pick up hundreds of lbs of trash in a years time. When you see something floating, just reach out with the net and scoop it up and put it in a bucket for proper disposal. Some peoples net needs to get wet from time to time and this would be a good way to get that done if you don't use it for fish catching purposes


Sooooo, pick up some trash, win some prizes, you'll look good to other fishermen (you know that just because they ain't staring you down, that they still are checking on your fishing), you'll look good to enforcement if checked, and you'll feel good at the end of the day. The environment will thank you as well.


Thanks for the contest Slab

[MJohnson]

My friend and I did something similar back in high school. We started when we would go out in his canoe, and we couldn't believe the amount of garbage floating in the back of coves. We would take a roll of black garbage bags and fill enough to load the canoe in only about 20-30 minutes. After that we started using my Norris Craft so we could haul more. Sam Venable mentioned us in one of his articles for the Knoxville News Sentinel. Some of the stuff we found was kind of scary. Syringes, pill bottles, etc. We found syringes almost every time we went.
I would disagree with the part about looking good to enforcement if checked, however. I got stopped by a female TWRA officer on Melton Hill one time while picking up garbage. She gave me a really hard time and kept me for about 45 minutes, asking me all kinds of questions and treating me really suspiciously. Checked my licenses, searched my boat, kept asking me what I was really up to, etc, etc. Finally told me not to be picking up garbage any more and told me it wasn't my job. That was the last time we ever picked up trash at the lake.