Charlie,
Thanks for your kudos about West Boggs. In your last post you may have started to uncover some of the causes of frustration many of you guys many have with IDNR. You keep talking about wanting to help with fisheries management, and that is a good cause for an angler to want to support. But a lot of the complaints are about property issues, ramps, entrance fees, improvements, etc. Other complaints seems to focus on enforcement issues. Someone here, maybe you, said they had been stopped and checked more on West Boggs than all the other lake combined.

There is a whole range of managmeent dynamics within IDNR. The Division of Fish and Wildlife manages all public water fisheriesm including West Boggs and all the state reservoirs. But they have nothing at all to do with management of state reservoir properties. That is now the division of State Parks and Reservoirs. When I worked there, "back in the day" as the kids say, those were seperate divisions. I worked for Reservoirs. Reservoir propertty management was then very closely aligned to fish and wildlife management goals. I'm not sure that is the same today as Park management concepts tend to rule the new combined division. It just amy be a real factor that I still tend to manage more the way I leared, which was under the old IDNR Division of Reservoirs model; which is mor epro hunting and fishing and less tree hugger friendly.

In the enforcement issues, the guys and gals in the ICO uniforms that stop you on West Boggs are the same guys and gals who would stop you on Patoka. They are IDNR officers. They don't work for me, althogh I'm very glad to have them on our water. I suspect you may find that even one ICO on the water is more likely to find you on 622 acres of wter than on 10,000 acres or so.