Thanks to everyone that volunteered. It was good to finally shake hands with Duke and Will. Thanks for letting the kids play with the replica. I think Will should add flies to his presentation next year. 😉
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Thanks for organizing this Jason, it was enjoyable talking to people about muskies. One lady that was listening as I answered questions for her husband replied "you love your job don't you?" I kinda laughed, and told her this wasn't my real job, but I do love muskies.
And thanks to Will for making sure it happens every year. I know I talked to quite a few about the new regs and the importance of the fish in an ecosystem. The new chart on the side of the booth really helped people to engage with the booth in general, and was a good conversation starter.
The show went really well with a good amount of interest in the booth. The two replicas brought a lot of people into the booth and then we started conversations with them about the club. There were a couple people interested in joining the club on Thursday and Friday while I was there, but we will see if they actually send in the form or sign up online. I'm not sure if we changed a lot of peoples' minds, but we educated a lot of people who didn't know much about them. It's hard to change the minds of people who don't like these fish and don't want them in 'their' lake. However, there are a lot of people out there who don't know anything about these fish, don't know anything about the new regulations, don't know anything about the benefits of having these fish in a system and those are the ones we educated a little bit. For example, a lot of people still think tiger muskies are in all these lakes and have no idea about different strains we're stocking now.
Only talked to a few bad apples but that's to be expected I guess. There were quite a few people that seemed to have some positive interest. One thing I learned that I never put much thought into is that the taxidermists need to require a tag when working on a muskie just as they do for the deer. The taxidermist we spoke with had no idea a tag was required to harvest so it was nice to talk to him in particular. A couple fellows didn't know we were anti-spearing and one proceeded to tell us that he had speared a 35" and that there was also a 32" and 36" speared by his group this year on Hamlin if I remember right. His excuse was that it's hard to tell when they come in. Then after telling us about that said "I want to spear fish like that" pointing at the two replicas. All I could do was shake my head. Some people are so dumb.
Regardless I had a great time and am looking forward to doing it again. I would recommend everyone to do it. It's a lot of fun!!!
"Revinchev" said:
On A couple fellows didn't know we were anti-spearing and one proceeded to tell us that he had speared a 35" and that there was also a 32" and 36" speared by his group this year on Hamlin if I remember right. His excuse was that it's hard to tell when they come in.!!
"Sir the DNR booth is over there go pay your fine" [smilie=brickwall.gif]
This is why we can't have nice things.
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