A fish's brain is pretty small, but it must be gigantic compared to the brain of the moron who put northern pike into Sebago Lake. The introduction of pike into the country's premier landlocked salmon lake (the species is named Salmo Sebago) was, of course, a criminal act, but it was also an act of towering, Everest-like stupidity. From the time the pike were discovered in Sebago five years ago, they have established a breeding population. This past week a Casco man hauled a 17-pound pike out of Sebago. In the fish's belly was a salmon.

Pike breed like rats, grow like weeds and eat just about anything, including young salmon. The presence of pike in the lake may signal the beginning of the end of Sebago as a salmon lake, and the beginning of the end of Sebago as a destination for anglers. The tourism industry based on Sebago's world-famed salmon will suffer, and a once-great Maine fishery will be reduced to a trash fishery. Sebago falling to the pike is like seeing a picture-postcard New England town taken over by violent gangs. Fisheries biologists say there's no way to get the pike out of the lake, now that they are well established. And more than likely, the crime of introducing pike to the lake was carried out by one or two people. Extremely stupid people. The exact same sort of people who put smallmouth bass into Umbagog Lake, threatening the premier wild brook trout fishery in the lower 48 states, the Rapid River.

The good news is that the Maine Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision and ruled that yes, the state can indeed ban the foul "personal watercraft" from certain Maine lakes, including Lake St. George in Liberty. The voters of Liberty followed the lead of dozens of Maine towns that have banned the obnoxious machines, and the state legislature followed up by making the bans state law.

In July of 2005 a Camden man decided to test the ban, flouting the law and riding his PWC on the lake. He was ticketed, and he fought the ticket. He won at the superior court level, but the Supreme Judicial Court overturned the lower court and upheld the ban. Bravo!

The so-called personal watercraft are, along with ATVs and snowmobiles, one of the worst applications of useful technology in all recorded history, the useful technology being the internal combustion engine. In the interest of one individual having "fun" a hundred or a thousand other users of the lake suffer. When operated as intended, they are fast, noisy, and dangerous. That's correct: when operated as intended. They are built to be operated exactly in the manner that has caused so many places to ban them. Do you think anyone would buy a PWC in order to operate it slowly, quietly and safely? Not a chance. So, how much "fun" can we stand? Why should the majority suffer so that one fool on a PWC can destroy what they came to the lake to enjoy?

I know there have been some radical, extreme proposals for dealing with PWCs (and ATVs, and snowmobiles, which fall into the same general category) but I take what I believe is a more moderate approach. All such machines should be seized, by force if necessary, trucked to a remote place, such as the Nevada desert, and dumped into a very deep hole, there to be vaporized by a thermonuclear device. As I say, I think this is a moderate solution which just about everyone except a few extremists could agree to.