Dr. G. D'Allssandro's Letter About The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission

This letter was sent to me... I just had to print it. The contents look eerily similar to what the CCA and the FWC are attempting to do in Florida.

When I was a kid, my best friend Roland Hernandez's dad occasionally used to take us fishing on the dike. The Hernandez family had six kids, well, six of their own, but since they were big hearted and generous people they usually had a few cousins tag along. Since I lived nearby, they would take me along like one of their own. They were good, hard working, law abiding citizens, and fun to be around. The mom was a great cook and loved cooking for all the kids. Mr. Hernandez was the one who first showed me how to bait a hook and tie a fishing knot. The Hernandez family had little money to spare since Mr. Hernandez was a house painter, so they couldn’t afford to go to too many places. But they did manage to scrape up enough money to buy some cheap Zebco 202 and 404 rods and reels, some live shrimp, a few feet of line and some chicken necks. To save money, Shasta sodas were substituted in place of real Coca-Cola. We always had a great time catching a stringer full of fish along with some crabs to boil, which we caught with the chicken necks. Thank God for Hernandez family and people who love to spend time with children! Many of my fondest childhood memories were spent with the Hernandez family.

Things have changed a lot since those days. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the state agency which governs all fishing activities in the state, have basically been turned into a puppet agency of a radical recreational fishing lobbying organization called the Coastal Conservation Association, or CCA in short. The CCA is best known for their ubiquitous redfish shaped bumper stickers imploring John Q. Public to "JOIN CCA." Let me explain. In the late 1980’s, the CCA was formed as a recreational lobbying group dedicated to eradicating commercial fishing in Texas. It was started by Shell oil heir and billionaire Walter Fondren and Ft. Worth oil billionaire Perry Bass. The first thing these well connected "good ole boys" did, was to insist that Texas Parks and Wildlife Department be given complete regulatory power-that is, the de facto power to govern the natural aquatic resources that should by all rights belong to all Texans. Once this was done, CCA gave retiring Parks and Wildlife officials cushy jobs and put them on their growing staff. Over the years, the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s complete dedication to CCA’s war against commercial fishing paid off big time. Today the bay shrimping industry (which according to all the scientific studies never significantly impacted recreational species of fish in Texas’ bays) has been basically regulated out of existence. This is the reason you can no longer find live bait in Texas and also why Texas’ seafood consumers are almost totally dependant upon chemically laced imported frozen shrimp grown on farms in Thailand and China while the plentiful, best shrimp in the world are dying of natural causes. This is exactly what the CCA wanted all along. The CCA vision was not that of a bunch of working class people taking their families fishing, rather, the CCA and their lackeys at the Texas Parks and Wildlife desired to turn Texas’ bays and nearshore gulf into a country club. A "club" that was run and managed, not for people like the Hernandez family, but for Joe Rich-guy from places like Clear Lake and the Woodlands; guys who own big gas guzzling outboard boats, chasing redfish and speckled trout across the bays, while other members of the "club" kingfish offshore. Those that took control of Texas's resources don‘t appreciate having a bunch of uncouth working class people cluttering up their bays. Back when I was a kid, you didn’t need permission from the government to tie a chicken neck to a piece of string and throw it in water to catch crabs which were and still are, as plentiful in Texas’s bays as mosquitoes.

Unfortunately today, thanks to our greedy state police agency, it costs $45.00 per person for permission from the government (which is what a license is after all), for each person to go fishing.

Let's imagine that a family like the Hernandez family existed today. (There are thousands existing today.) $45 times six kids equals $270. then two more licenses for yourself and your wife, bait and tackle, the cheapest sodas and maybe hot dogs or bologna and that brings the simple American enjoyment of the natural resources God gave to all Texans to well over $400 thanks to a greedy and grasping state police agency and the CCA that created the fiasco. $400 to take the kids fishing just once a year??? Well that’s exactly what the CCA and the Texas Parks and Wildlife wanted-to turn Texas’ bays and nearshore gulf into a country club that only the rich could afford. Men like Walter Fondren and Perry Bass wanted to make sure that the rich natural aquatic resources would be available to only certain people, specifically wealthy white men of their own social class.


It's almost impossible to find live bait anymore because Texas Parks and Wildlife have intentionally driven the bay shrimpers out of business, just as they boasted to their supporters at the rich recreational fishing lobbying group (started by Mr.Fondren and Mr. Bass) that they would. Listen to former Texas Parks and Wildlife fisheries chief Hal Osbern boast to his buddies at the CCA,

“We can regulate the shrimp resource out of an overfished state without any buy-back, without even a limited entry. You can make regulations that make - basically, you know, tie and area closures that make the shrimper himself so inefficient - the shrimp stock is doing fine because you only allow them to fish two hours a day in this one little area, whatever it would take biologically. The buy-back and the limited entry were done to address the social and economic side of the fishery of the equation. So it’s not necessary. You can regulate them out of business. You can legislate them out of business. There’s been proposals to set a hard date, and after this date there will be no bay shrimpers allowed.” As society we can choose how we want to use that public resource. The red drum and the spotted sea trout wars in the early ‘80s, if you recall, it was an allocation to this particular user group in an attempt to get an uncontrolled source of mortality the commercial side under control. It was done-and I won’t say-not kinder and gentler, but certainly it was a lot harder edge than here. “You can no longer sell these species.” So we have to choose as a society how we want to social engineer around these changes that we have coming.”

To those of us who can’t afford four hundred dollars to take the family fishing, well, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department don’t want our kind there anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez are both gone now and the kids are all grown up and moved away. I still see my friend Roland every now and then. He has a wife and kids of his own now although he can’t afford to take them fishing.

...And that was exactly what the CCA planned all along.

May God Bless you Mr. Grix. I hope you are successful at preserving fishing for the working class in Florida.

Sincerely, Dr. G. D'Allssandro