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CLUTE, Texas – Drones have been prohibited from use for fishing in Texas, drawing concerns from some involved in the industry.<\/p>\n
The ban is a result of rules and regulations<\/a> from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Some people, including one small business in Clute, Texas, are expressing worries about the change.<\/p>\n Drone fishing ban What we know:<\/p>\n The TPWD said in their Monday release that they’ve reviewed the regulations on airborne hunting<\/a> and determined that using drones to fish falls under the scope of banned methods.\u00a0<\/p>\n The release refers to the use of drones to assist in deploying bait, as it’s considered aiding in the take or attempt to take wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n What we don’t know:<\/p>\n The penalty for violating the law is not included in the release or regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Effect on Texas businesses <\/p>\n Local perspective:<\/p>\n Clute business owner Williams Yearsin says because of the kind of fishing he does, this is going to hurt the sport and his wife’s business, Hooked on Tackle. \u00a0<\/p>\n Yearsin says that as a disabled veteran, he can\u2019t kayak out in the water like others can, so this helps him and the drone has given him the ability to get back into the sport the way he loves, but the new regulation will hurt him.\u00a0<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n “So where we live down here there\u2019s one of the larger sports, \u2018land bass shark fishing.\u2019 It\u2019s using a drone or other means of deploying a bait to catch sharks, bullreds or larger predatory species from the surf from the beach without a boat or anything else. It\u2019s a very big market, not just for us with our store, but you have several people who run charters. That\u2019s their business,” said Yearsin.<\/p>\n Texas Parks and Wildlife responds <\/p>\n The other side:<\/p>\n TPWD sent the following release to FOX Local in response to a request for comment:\u00a0<\/p>\n “The Federal Airborne Hunting Act falls under the administration of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) at the federal level. There has not been a new regulation enacted, or any changes made at the state level. Our intent with publicizing this information and updating the Texas Outdoor Annual was to inform the public of the federal statute (AHA\/50 CFR \u00a7 19.11). If someone chooses to use an Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), also known as drones, to deploy bait while bank or surf fishing, it is a federal, not state level violation, and no state charges would be incurred. However, we do not condone or authorize violating federal law.”<\/p>\n Yearsin says the language that they are basing this new policy change on is outdated.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The verbiage that they use is, to take, attempt to take or aid in catching a fish. I don\u2019t see how, when they wrote this in 1956, they thought about using drones to drop the bait for and then catch the fish by legal means, which is rod and reel, which is what is required by law. And what I found out about this is not even a law this is a regulation inside the law that they\u2019re interpreting,” Yearsin said. “That\u2019s cool to put rules and regulations in place, but don\u2019t use something vague to cut it all out, so I\u2019m hoping that the word gets out to the right people so we have change.”\u00a0<\/p>\n The Source: Information in this article comes from Texas Parks and Wildlife and a FOX Local interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas<\/a>Clute<\/a>Sports<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLUTE, Texas – Drones have been prohibited from use for fishing in Texas, drawing concerns from some involved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13358,39878,223,154,27,29,28,216,393],"class_list":["post-82575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-brazoria-county","tag-clute","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tx","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/karma-drone_1479156450540_2276540_ver1.0.jpg\")
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