[geeks] geeks Digest, Vol 86, Issue 11

[Joshua Boyd]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 12:19:30PM -0600, Jonathan Patschke wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jan 2010, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
>
>>> Who would possibly understand a law so asinine?
>>
>> It's that way in the US, at least in Pennsylvania. Any game is property
>> of the people (it is a commonwealth after all). In order to hunt/fish it
>> you need a license, and there are restrictions on limiting people access
>> to your property to do so.
>
> That's not what I asked.  There's a difference between understanding and
> acceptance.  I can accept that politicians will write words on paper as
> justification to steal and regulate whatever they want, but that doesn't
> make the reasoning of those words any more sound.
>
> Presumably, going back to your original example, the owners of the pond
> could put those fish in a barrel and still own them--even if that barrel
> had water in it.  Suppose, then, they buried the barrel halfway in the
> soil--still theirs?  What about burying the barrel so that its top is
> level with the ground--still theirs?  What if it's a really BIG barrel?

I thought the original example was a lake, which to me indicates that it
is fed by something coming from off your property and drains to
something also off your property.  I realize that this might not be the
technical definition of lake though.

As I under stand it, in PA if I have a pond (natural or man made) that
is fed from a spring, well, or just local runoff and I stock it with
fish, I can fish it without a license and restrict who has access to
this pond.

If I have something larger that is fed and drained by a creek or river,
then this larger body of water is considered an extension of the creek
or river, which is considered public property.  As such, I can't
restrict physical access to the water, the land under the water, or a
certain distance of dry land beside the water which is considered part
of of the public right of way.  Since a lake that is entirely contained
on my property but is fed by a creek is considered to be part of that
creek it follows the same rules for fishing in that creek, even if I put
fish there myself.  

If my understanding of PA rules is correct, then they don't seem too
unreasonalbe.
 
Going back to the original example, was it stated where the water for
the lake came from and how the lake drained?

> At some arbitrary point along that continuum, some politicians decided
> that, despite putting his own labor and wealth into selecting the fish,
> purchasing the fish, buying the pond, and placing the fish into the pond,
> he'd abdicated ownership of the resources he purchased just because he
> assembled them in a certain way.  I can accept that, but that doesn't
> cause it to make sense.