I have been fishing since I was in diapers, and my eldest caught his first fish on rod and reel in his own diaper as well. Used to be you could get a fishing license for less than what you'd get paid for an hours work. Nowadays, here, it's almost a days work for many folks at $90 with all the appropriate tags, validations, and what not. That's the only reason I no longer fish. I actually broke out one of my surf rods today, and removed the reel, all covered in cobwebs from lack of use since 2016.

The ever rising fees are not only the cause of lack of fishing, that is the purpose of those fees IMHO. While government takes in a tidy sum, commercial fishing businesses lose a lot of potential profits, and they have powerful lobbies. Private interests continually lobby government directly, by astroturfing, and gaslighting as well, to forward their commercial interests. It's likely that the agencies themselves have no clue that this is happening, but their representatives sure as hell do.

Pretty soon there's gonna be a tax on the air we breathe. That's the whole purpose of AGW alarmism IMHO: to create a carbon tax where we will pay for that free plant food we breathe out.

Thanks!

Edit: @joelalvarez pointed out the increasingly restrictive and complex regulations that are now in effect, and it is difficult to overestimate the contribution this has to lack of interest in fishing. The various regulations are now nearly a half inch thick, and if you misinterpret just one, you could be fined significantly more than you spent on the license and gear to go fishing in the first place.