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Now, ranchers contact Mike to see if their property has potential for fishing.Instead of a race to streams crowded with other fishermen, supplies are racing to meet the market demand.Though fee fishing in the United States is still new, the system has long been the norm on trout streams and salmon rivers in Great Britain.There, fishing rights have been privately owned for centuries.Those unfamiliar with the British system may think that it means only the wealthy nobility can enjoy a day of angling, but, as with restaurants or shopping malls, the marketplace for fishing in England offers a full range of options.Some of the best fishing beats are owned by the wealthy, while others are owned by small villages, pubs, and fishing clubs.To ensure that conditions are pleasurable for anglers, the rivers are divided into ’beats’ about two kilometers long usually with no more than three rods on each beat at a given time.The value of Houghton’s fishing rights is said to be worth around $30 million.4 But the untitled can easily become members of a syndicated trout fishing outlet with a price of $750 per year, entitling the member to fish one day per week.The Greyhound Inn, a bed and breakfast in Stockbridge, owns a few hundred yards on the Test River running directly behind the inn.The owner Andy McCall allows two fishermen at a time to fish the beat for $45 per person per day.The cost includes a ’gillie’ to outfit and guide you to where fish lie in wait for your fly.Fishing on the Allen, the Test, and the Itchen commands a higher price because they are better managed.Cattle are fenced away from the banks, weeds are controlled, and, perhaps most importantly, the number of fishermen is limited.An avid American fisherman, Clifford Russell, described his experience on the Allen River as ’beautiful, productive, and challenging fishing’ with ’no worries about whoand how manymay be around the next bend.No fear that you are fishing over a pool emptied by the careless wading and casting of some competitor.Similarly, in northern Scotland, famous salmon rivers such as the Brora, the Cassley, the Carron, the Helmsdale, the Naver, and the Oykel are in high demand because quality is assured through private fishing rights.While most of the great salmon rivers in the United States have been adversely affected by hydroelectric dams, the Scottish rivers remain relatively untouched.The rights to fish these rivers are held by individuals or syndicates, and anyone wishing to wet a fly there can arrange it through one of the small local hotels that own fishing rights or rent a private lodge through estate managers who specialize in fishing leases.Fishing on one of these rivers costs about $1,500 per rod per day.Two or three anglers can split the cost and alternate fishing.Owners of fishing rights act as unpaid policemen, monitoring England’s inland waters for pollution.Given the secure rights, however, these conflicts can be and have been resolved by purchasing netting rights.The Atlantic Salmon Conservation Trust is a nonprofit group that has purchased 280 netting rights at a cost of $2.1 million and expects to reduce the netting catch of salmon by 25 percent.Salar Properties takes another approach.The only problem was that the two streams running through his property had few fish because they had been trashed by years of cattle grazing the banks.Trout numbers have risen dramatically from these changes, and the stream doctors, as they are known, made a handsome profit.Hence, the staff includes experts in hydrology, geomorphology, fisheries biology, landscape architecture, and geology.When they are finished using these techniques, the patient is healthier.Prices for a house call from the stream doctors range from $5 to $20 per foot of stream reclaimed.Business is going so well that the company spends less than 1 percent of gross sales on advertising, relying instead on references and reputation.From its two offices in Bozeman, Montana, and Hood River.In cases such as the Flying D Ranch, the goal was to improve fishing for the owners and their friends.’’You’re not going do it by wholesale taking away of resources from industry and farmers.Making those deals should be relatively easy under the western prior appropriation system that clearly defines rights to water.Entrepreneurs like Zach Willey and Andrew Purkey can go to state agencies and discover who owns water and hence with whom they must deal.Because most states do not consider private ownership of instream flows a beneficial use, water rights transferred from legitimate agricultural uses to instream uses can be forfeited.Often it is only state or federal agencies that can claim water for instream uses.Until 1988 there was almost no way that diversion rights could be retired to be left instream.That year, however, the legislature passed legislation allowing the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks to bargain with farmers on a very limited basis to return water to streams for fish and wildlife purposes.Even this minor step toward water marketing was opposed by farmers who feared that environmental and recreational interests would get enough money to buy up all agricultural water.When this did not happen and when farmers realized that making deals could reallocate water without acrimony, their resistance to water marketing softened.Such changes indicate the growing pressure to follow Willey’s strategy.Several states are recognizing the growing demand for instream flows and seeking ways to make this happen without taking water from status quo users.With transferability between willing environmental buyers and willing agricultural sellers, Mark Twain’s adage that ’Whiskey is for drinkin’ and water is for fightin’’ can be laid to rest.Priming the Invisible Pump.A Nuisance Approach.A Deal That Might Save a Sierra Gem.Rancher Leases Water Rights to Keep Stream Full for Salmon.Buying Peace in Western Water War.Northwest Area Foundation.Northwest Area Foundation.Britain’s Streams Are Lovely, Clear, and Deep.Reason, August/September.Teeming Oasis or Desert Mirage?Nature Conservancy, September/October.Freer Markets Would Protect Northwest Salmon.Aldo Leopold, Foreword to A Sand County Almanac