May 6, 2002

Greetings,

Over the past week or so, the information contained in the Coastal Conservation Association's news release has shown up in several newspapers almost in the form of the press release itself.

I noticed the one in the Tallahassee Democrat written by a Rick Farren whose name I have seen in Florida Sportsman articles sent to me and I assumed he worked primarily for Karl Wickstrom.

When I sent Captain Eric Schmidt the Tallahassee Democrat's outdoor writer's column he was amazed at the similarity with the Byron Stout article and immediately sent a letter to the Fort Myers News Press that is attached to this e mail.

We all know this is how the CCA works. They have a network of outdoor writers positioned in certain newspapers who do their bidding when called upon. They don't let the truth stand in their way and they always are anti-commercial fishing in some form or another.

We will try to expose this network of yellow journalism to let everyone know that what they read in some newspaper columns might not be the whole truth, in fact, if they ever read anything by Byron Stout or Rick Farren on commercial fishing, they should hold their nose and throw the newspaper in the trash.

Cheers,

Bob Jones

Capt. Schmidt's letter