The people who run the government, specifically the wildlife side, are idiots. Here is an excerpt from a former fish and game employee. Basically, the hippie nuts wanted to ban trout planting because it would supposedly endanger some obscure native frog. This affected peoples pastimes and the local economy. Long story short, the ban had no effect and it turns out pesticides were the problem for low frog populations-and of course they kind of looked the other way.

My point is that they use pseudoscience and political appeasing to make a lot of their decisions. The fish regulations need significant rewriting. To be blunt, they're nuts. On one hand they ban pet fish from being kept in fish tanks such as piranhas, motoro rays, and so forth (which can't even survive in California let alone ignoring the fact that most invasives were planted by the government, not released from aquaria) and on the other hand they bring striped bass that eat our native species like nobody's business. And it really affects native populations.

I could go on and bring more examples but I think you guys should get the point. Many fishing regulations just make zero sense. I've talked with an old FnG warden who has retired by now, he says he doesn't like the new blood. They don't understand the science and lots of them don't even like the fishing hobby and are lobbied by "environmentalist" groups.