When my husband David sent me a story about the Obama administration’s secret plan to abolish fishing, I assumed it was from The Onion. But it’s ESPN who’s getting the word out that the president could single-handedly “prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.” You really don’t have to know anything about this upcoming report to know that’s not going to happen.

ESPNOutdoors writer Robert Montgomery then basically turns over the ESPN platform to Phil Morlock, whom he describes as director of environmental affairs for Shimano, a Japanese maker of bikes and fishing equipment. Montgomery lets Morlock ululate uninterrupted for paragraph after paragraph, using preposterous phrases like “Big Green.” A more accurate description would have been that Morlock is a lobbyist for fishing and hunting groups. He’s on the board of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF), the group that lobbies for hunters and anglers. And he’s just started a similar group in Canada.

What works for the hunting industry is scaring hunters that Obama has a secret plan to take their guns away. Gun sales rose after Obama was elected. Morlock clearly wants to infect anglers with the same psychosis that makes hunters feel aggrieved and embattled.

Hunters have long tried to rope fishermen into their “sportsmen” mantle. Morlock and Montgomery whine that Obama isn’t considering the huge economic impact of fishing. (I guess they don’t have Google.) Hunters love to conflate stats on how many people fish and hunt

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