“Beginning at midnight March 25 and lasting until at least 5 p.m. on April 8, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is closing recreational fishing statewide in response to the governor’s order to ‘Stay Home, Stay Healthy’ and limit the spread of coronavirus.”
This includes of course Bill’s Boathouse in Tillicum where the notice seen below has been posted.
Mr. Anderson,
I am both sorry and perplexed by your news that fishing is closed and you are now out of business for the short term.
I am sorry, even if it is the only intelligent way for our governor to run our state. You, with your business started by your parents decades ago, are economically harmed.
I am perplexed in that I know not if it is indeed the right thing for our governor to have done. I say that because I have visited your business site on a few occasions some time ago.
My memory tells me you have two small parking lots where there were always a few cars but not people. More likely than not I could park in your lot and never encounter anyone walking back to your business and dock. If I did land in your parking lot with someone else, it would be easy to maintain the 6′ social distance edict.
I would have to practice social distancing in your office/store and on the dock.
Once I rented a boat and left the shore, I would be bobbing around on the lake fishing in an area of natural social distancing.
If my thinking is accurate, allowing fishing might promote good health because it is essentially just the fisherman and the fish.
Oh, maybe that is it. The governor may not want the catch to catch Covid 19.
What am I missing? Where did my thinking go wrong?
Good luck Mr. Anderson. “This too shall pass.” You are a survivor, so I know in the end you shall return. Perhaps customers with pent up desire to fish will return again and again to make up for your loss. After all some of your customers are hooked on fishing.
Joseph Boyle
Interesting that fishing is closed but not boating.
You have posed an excellent thought-provoking question, Mr. Brandstetter. If Mr. Anderson chooses to keep his business open, maybe citizens could support his long term community business by leaving their fishing gear at home and just going out for a boat ride. Then one can ask, What does the No Fishing rule accomplish.
What about people who live on the lake with a boat parked at their dock? If they go out boating, is the lake considered a part of their home so they would be practicing the shelter at the home concept?
I am not wishing to be hypercritical in these harsh times. I am just asking as I seek to understand if government decisions are intelligent or ignorant.
Joseph Boyle
You got it right Joe. I just have to shake my head at all these restrictions. Think I’ll go cry in my coffee.
Hmmm? I live on a lake with my own dock. I can’t go fishing? Sound like some over eager staffer on the WSFW wanted to get in on the lockdown action. This is how government overreacts to events and creates a bigger crisis that would have otherwise occurred. Here’s a blue print on what Inslee et. al. should have done.
To a large extent this has been a government, federal, state and local, over reaction to covid-19 and has manufactured a crisis that may be worse than the disease itself. However I see a change coming to that approach.
Covid-19 has the same transmission rate as the flu.
80% of those tested positive have no or mild symptoms.
Since we have now way of testing everyone we really don’t know the extent of the disease. The rapid rise in diagnosed cases is directly attributable to increase testing not necessarily the spread of the virus already among us.
Death rate is around 1% but that too is suspect since we don’t know the full extent of the virus in our population. As more people are diagnosed the death rate will probably decrease as a percentage of those infected.
People over 60 with underlying health issues are the most vulnerable. Their death rate is as much as 100 times that of other groups 59 and younger. That’s where emphasis should be placed.
The worst outbreak of the virus is in high density urban areas, like Seattle, as might be expected with people living so close to each other. That’s where emphasis should be placed.
The solution should be much more focused than we find with the government approach of locking down the entire country and state.
People have a responsibility for their own health and that of those they’re in contact. Personal hygiene, covering coughs, staying home if sick, household cleaning, social separation, are all things each of us can do. We don’t need government for these.
Government does have a role for those things that may be beyond personal responsibility. Protecting the vulnerable is one of them. Priorities to senior testing; provisions for senior hours at businesses; adult living centers, nursing homes quarantines; are just some of the things government can encourage.
Government should also give priority assistance to urban areas where the threat of infection is the greatest and include a quarantine of the population within a city’s jurisdiction.
Government should restart the economy which should have been shut down only until these trends developed. Kids back to school and our working populace (for the most part under 59) back to work to the extent that they cannot continue to work from home.
Our society is a system and introduction of the virus into this system cannot be allowed to “crash” it. The notion that we have to anything/everything to save one life patently unrealistic. People die: it’s part of the human condition. If we stopped society in its tracks until we solved deaths from addiction, traffic accidents, suicides, heart disease, etc. etc. etc. life as we know it would grind to a halt and millions more perish as a result.
John Arbeeny
It does seem unlikely that fishing on American Lake would contribute to the spread of Covid-19 or more so than boating, because all of the gathering points I am aware of offer plenty of space to keep six feet apart.
Plus, some folks depend on fishing for eating.
I suppose other fishing locations may be different. … more difficult to avoid groupings.
That said… it’s only temporary.
Of course, like so many, many small businesses that have shuttered their doors, we’ll do our part in helping to stop the spread of coronavirus having posted this notice on the gates leading to the boathouse and having announced closure here in this publication and on social media.
We do not want our valued, many long-time customers, ticketed unawares.
There is concern of course for three major rowing programs – two universities and high school youth whose coaching launches are moored here – that have terminated their respective sports.
What little amount we generate from tackle sales, boat rental and dock fishing fees – truth be told it’s more a hobby than a source of significant income – moorage is how we survive this time of year.
And if that isn’t to be, then we’ll be wearing the lifejackets we send out with boaters.
With public launches being closed, presumably only lake-front dwellers with their own craft can take to the water.
The fell-swoop, almost a one-size-fits-all government approach to this crisis, is one-part top-down heavy-handedness, and one-part bottom-up human nature.
Joel Connelly entitles his March 26 article in the SeattlePI “Cabin Fever Weekend: Beaches closed, no fishing, stay away from Mt. Si due to coronavirus outbreak.”
While the outdoors are therapeutic – even bird watching (closed); clam-digging (closed); fishing and public-access boating (closed) – when those seeking it congregate in the numbers they are – trailheads and campgrounds crowded with traffic “worse than mid-summer” according to Connelly’s article, then ‘Washington is closed’ is the consequence.
We’re in this together.
Community Matters.