Shit! The 7400 line is a traditional put-in takeout for the river!
It has become a public right of way, merely by the fact of regular public usage by fisher people over the years! What's that phrase I'm dredging for...ah, yes... Eminent Domain!
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine supposedly claims that there are quite a few outlaw scofflaws around who regularly take their 4-wheelers or dirt bikes past closed gates and red dots (here in Grays Harbor Co) and never seem to get apprehended. Into the hills they vanished....its all a fun game of cat and mouse to them, anyway.
I couldn't name any of those jokers,
but if I could, I wouldn't ever ask them to go fishing with me.
I seriously doubt that the cost of employing security personnel to police the kind of rebellion that would arise (if this and other favorite gates are closed) would be covered by selling "fishing permits."
Many of my former access roads are now gated or red-dotted, and my local stream fishing world is getting smaller. I'm not amused.
It pisses me off to hike in or ride a mountain bike in past a gate that only closes the road to motor vehicles (walking, biking. horseback OK), and then find 4-wheeler tracks all over the place, often having gouged muddy ruts in the trail.
So now, due to many gate closures in the recent past around here, I have to burn more fuel and waste more time to drive long distances to a decent hike-in spot just to go stream fishing (other than fishing tidewater from a boat). I have already been gated out of 4 (maybe more, already, as far as I know...won't know til I go) of my former local hike-in cutthroat spots that first required a drive in on logging roads. I am not amused by this.
Weyerhauser, Green Diamond, and their ilk have too much power in this state. Maybe they should be forced to re-open recreational access, or else get bucked down to size.