VT working on exempting Champlain from non importation law

I don't know if this helps or not. Heck you guys probably already have the scoop anyways. But just in case you don't.

Our club has a T scheduled on Champlain this year. Last the feds relaxed the transportation of fish across state lines regulation to allow tournament fish to be transported and weighed in on contigious bodies of water that are border waters. With this new information I emailed VT fish and Wildlife last week to get clarity on what we can and cannot do.

Bernie Pientka emailed me back with a thorough explanation including that they are currently working on revising the regulation about interstate bodies of water to mirror the notice the feds sent out last week about relaxing the transportation of tournament fish over state lines on bodies of water that lie on state borders.

Here is his response to me. I hope this is of help to the Federation.

I am the fisheries biologists who oversees all the tournament permits for the State of Vermont and also manage a large portion of Northern Lake Champlain.

First as you know there was a Federal regulation which prohibited the transports of fish out of states listed as positive for VHS. New York is a Positive state. Until Friday ( 5/4/07) this regulation prevented the transport of fish out of the state of New York. On Lake Champlain the state line is the deep water mark (somewhat the middle of the main lake). Biologically on Lake Champlain this did not make a sense because fish could often naturally move across the state line. The federal regulation update on 5/4/07 allows the transport across state lines for fish during catch and release fishing tournament/derbies (Heading 4c in the amended federal order).

At the state level. Earlier this year Vermont created a new regulation which prohibited the importation of Fish into the State of Vermont without specific fish health testing. This regulation also has a condition (4.3) which gives the Commissioner of Fish and Wildlife the authority to allow the importation of live wild caught fish from specific waters. We currently have a draft version of these specific waters under review (Lake Champlain is on this list). Until the federal regulation was changed (occurred on Friday) we could not move forward with our state regulation because they would contradict each other.

As it currently stands (today) you can not bring fish from New York across the state line to Vermont while on Lake Champlain because of our Vermont Importation Regulation. We are working on the list of specific waters where you could (Includes Lake Champlain). It is our intent to have this completed as soon as possible.

I hope this was helpful and if you have any additional questions please let me know.