I fished commercially. I fish with a bunch of guys who do. Its not the commercial guys that are creating the issue...it's the internet warriors. Some of these commercial giys have been fishing the canal for decades. There were no issues back then.
Not saying it’s good or bad just passing along information!
Think it has more to do with the issue they were seeing with commercial guys catching bass on "non commercial" days and storing them to sell on commercial days. Which increased the overall traffic (and illegal commercial harvesting) every day. All it takes is a few bad apples.
I'll take videos of the shenanigans I see daily on the canal. the stuff you will see will blow you away. I am literally woken up out of a sound sleep due to what sounds like a tractor trailer of caged gorillas crashing into a tree. they sound like animals with their hooting and hollering at 2am.
Couldn't have said it better. I tried to fish one night with my gf who waits until sun up to fish and we had to switch spots bc of the morons next to us blaring music, swear, smoking, etc. To Jon's point there seems to be an equal amount of unpleasant experiences compared to pleasant ones in recent memory and I don't blame him for taking a break from it. If I had more time and knowledge on other spots I'd prob avoid fishing it as frequently as I do. CT shore is a heck of a lot closer but I haven't invested the time to learn it.
I know because I stopped going not because of commercial guys but because of all the internet hero googans.
I think they are really doing it to appease some people. I think they know it isn't the commercial guys but by closing it to them they can point to it and say they did something. They don't want to deal with the backlash that would come with closing it to the public.