To My Immediate and Extended Virginia Fly Fishing Family
As many of you may have heard, my brother-n-law and I are being sued in civil court by the developer of a golf community near Covington for fishing a section of the lower Jackson River. He is seeking an injunction to prevent us (and all anglers) from wading in the river adjacent to his property, claiming that he owns the river bottom by virtue of an uninterrupted chain of deeds to that river bottom stretching all the way back to an original grant from King George III. This despite the fact that this section of the river has been deemed navigable and public for many years, and is promoted by the state as a blue-ribbon fishery.
For almost one year now, Charlie and I have been fighting this, first through criminal court and now through civil court. We have fought it not because that is our favorite trout fishery in the state, but because if we had just rolled over and accepted the injunction a very dangerous legal precedent would have been set, kicking-off a “land grab” along other colonial-era rivers, as land owners pursued this civil tactic of putting the burden on the angler to disprove a claim of King’s Grant in order to privatize “their” stretch of river. I personally couldn’t sleep at night knowing this was the legacy I left the angling community in my state.
So, now that this case is about the broader rights of the Virginia angling community, and the rights of your children and grand children to use our rivers and enjoy the sport each of you has enjoyed, I personally need your help in seeing this fight through to a favorable ruling. Please go to our site at www.virginiariversdefensefund.org and do three things:
1) Send your extended fishing, hunting and paddling community the link to our cause,
2) Write, call or email the VA Attorney General, asking him to protect the property of the state and join our case as a third party defendant before the July 25th hearing (to compel the state to join)
3) Donate what you can to our defense fund (link on site). While we’ve built an impressive team of volunteers, who are spending hundreds of hours a week mobilize the angling community, the legal fees of our lawyers need to be paid and they are beyond what Charlie and I can do personally.
