OK, those of you folks who have fished for free in Maine's coastal and tidal waters your entire life, that's about to change. What was once your god-given right to toss a line off the pier and pull up a fish is now going to cost you. You should stop whining about it, because whining won't do any good. Time to suck it up.

We know, we know, pretty soon they're going to tax breathing and sleeping, too. We know, fishing for stripers and tinkers and blues is our birthright and the gummint should just keep its money-grubbin' nose out of it.

But here's the deal: The federal government has more power than you and me. It has more power than our governor and state delegation. And there's this federal law, see, called the Mag-nuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, that's kind of an undeniable fact. Two years ago, President Bush signed a reauthorization of that law that says the feds need to establish a registry of recreational anglers.

Already, 14 states have such registries. But Maine and the other New England states don't and this week, the feds announced that you and all your buddies and the approximately 300,000 saltwater anglers who fish in Maine's waters (half of whom are from away) and the hundreds of thousands of saltwater anglers up and down New England and other states that don't have registries are henceforth going to be counted.

Now, there are more than a few of us who would be happy to be ignored, uncounted and generally left alone, especially when we're standing with our feet in the water, saltwater rod at hand.

But here's the thing: In the end, being counted is actually a good idea. No matter how much it hurts to fork over some money to get a license, if the feds only know how many commercial fishermen there are (they already must have a license), if they only hear from commercial fishermen when decisions are being made about how many fish can be caught, then you and other recreational anglers will likely lose out. The commercial guys get first dibs on the fish.

So you need to put your money where your rod is.

That 15 bucks or so the feds want to charge will allow you to be heard. Once you pay to fish, then they can count you (as opposed to the current federal method of counting recreational anglers which, it's hard to believe, includes random calls to people in the phone book). The government then will know how many anglers there are and what effect they may be having on fish populations. And the feds will have to listen to recreational anglers, because they then will be identified as a constituent group with a distinct stake in the issue.

We know that this kind of compliant attitude from us about the loss of our rights will likely spur a storm of scorn from many of our readers. But before you accuse us of being quislings, rest assured we don't like the license requirement. We have just reached a state of acceptance about it.

And we see its positive aspects. In the spirit of making lemonade from these lemons, we have a few suggestions. The big, bad feds say that anglers in a state that has its own saltwater license don't have to participate in the federal registry.

So we'd like to see the state adopt a license requirement, even though hearings about such a state license last legislative session could only be described as "stormy" -- Katrina-like stormy. But adopting our own saltwater license would mean two things: You don't have to pitch your license fee into the abyss of the federal deficit, and the state will have to spend any license money on programs to enhance saltwater recreational fishing and fish populations.

Then, the state should keep the fee as low as possible. Connecticut has proposed a combined saltwater-freshwater license that would cost less than the price of the two licenses separately; that, too, strikes us as a wise idea.

And finally, the license should be required only for those older than 16 and younger than 70. We just can't bring ourselves to say we should stick either Gramps or little Jenny or Johnny with a license requirement.

In the end, nothing will stop a fisherman from fishing. That's just one of the immutable laws of the universe. So, despite all the uproar generated by this requirement, we doubt we'll see a diminution of fishing in Maine's salt waters. We'll just see a lot of cranky fishermen, that's all.