Law Enforcement

[Defeatist]

Sounds great, but in this day in age you know how things work. You want to take the punishment into your own hands thats fine, but be prepared to suffer the legal ramifications that follow. One call from the poachers, and you are walking away in handcuffs for assault. Like I said before, I disagree with the way things were handled, bottom line light ramifications were laid down upon those with the fish. This is the dillemma that occurs all the time, one guy mishandles a situation and the civilians like yourselves paint the entire face of law enforcement with your brush of scrutiny because one individual took upon themselves to not do their job properly. Like I said before, if you feel that strongly about it you need to make noise in the right areas....in this case, the head of DEP.

Jawzz, the problem you run into when trying to take the punishment into your own hands as you wrote in your post, is a simple complaint by the poacher, a positive id on you after lumping those guys up results in you walking away in cuffs and going to court for your actions. And I hate to say it, but depending on the judge you get, they may look at the beatings you put forward upon someone for taking fish as excessive and unreasonable. So is it worth it? Go to the top and try to have the problem rectified, dont take the law into your own hands...

[Jawzz]

I hear what you are saying and I have cooled off a bit on this. Though it sounded, I don't mean going and physically attacking poachers, but if an upset group of fisherman were to approach guys like this in a way that was non-threating but firm and uncomforatble for the poachers, it may have some impact. I'll tell you right now, how it was handled did nothing of the sort. It is frustrating to hear about this and have concerned folks do the right thing and call authorities and nothing happens. This incident was so far out of bounds it's increditible. One would think that the first reaction would be try to procecute to the fullest and ask questions later.

I will delete my last post as I was writing with red in my eyes, I am not trying to create "marshall law" nor paint with a "broad brush"

[Defeatist]

Well well, I got the skinny on the situation, and 1st things 1st....100+ fish is an extremely gross overexaggeration of the numbers of fish....try 40 tops, and thats not confirmed, it may have been even less from what I was told...but still 40 too many. Spin gear in a non spin gear area, legitimate, yet it happens on the housy alot more than you think. The funny thing is the farmington TMA allows it, as well as bait....(how bout artificials only....feasible to me). The part without producing positive identification, now that is an ever growing problem that law enforcement runs into, alot of time is wasted daily on situations like this, just fruitlessly trying to ascertain who you actually have in front of you. The other "rumors" that have been going around about an unregistered vehicle being driven away from the area are fictitious, the vehicle reg didnt come up on DMV files because it was a recent transfer of plates. The occupants produced legitimate paperwork for the vehicle, this happens very often as well, DMV may take upto 8-16 weeks before a new reg is put into the system here in CT....although unsat, its reality. One ticket issued for all the fish, to the lucky guy with ID who fell on the sword for all the dead fish....Right? Probably not, but look at the situation. At the very least the equipment should have been confiscated too.....

I am not sticking up for the DEP officers lack of enforcement, I am just relaying to all who read this that stories get twisted the more they are spread....And quite a few people who "claimed" to be there were in fact not.....Hearsay is garbage, facts are what you should be basing your rants upon........just some food for thought.....

[AaronJasper]

i was there to see the officer issue the one ticket and i was watching them walk to the van with their bags of fish. there were quite a few fish in each bag. i also know that there was also a cooler full of fish. these guys were standing there laughing at the officer. rich i know that you would have done all you could because you are a stand up guy and would have done the right thing. mike i also know that you would have taken them to the cleaners. i wish that rich was on duty when this happens. you two guys take your work very seriously and would have taken the time to write these guys up and give them the proper punishment. the other thing that i am really fired up about is that we finally have a chance to get these guys and they got away for less than what the fish would have cost them at the store. usually no officer comes and they get away with it EVERY time. if you look at it the 77 dollar ticket spread over the 6 guys costs them about 15 bucks each. still much cheaper than the 3 day license. i know that here in nj they are working on making the fines all 200 dollars plus. disobeying a law is illegal whether it happens on a highway, home or a river.

[Don J]

Slight change of subject on same topic...

We were fishing in the Bulls Bridge TMA early on Sunday morning. A trio of bait fisherman, appeared to be father and two sons, heaved their lines out and setup immediately downstream of us (too close, actually). They caught a few bass and trout and were putting them on a stringer. I asked them if they knew they weren't allowed to keep fish and they replied that they had seen the signs. The older son said they were just keeping to show to the little brother and that he would release them later. I suspected this was a lie, however, if true, they'd likely be putting dead fish back in the river.

I didn't have the DEP # with me, but called HRO and they gave it to me. I dialed repeatedly for the next hour or so and got a busy signal each time. When I got home to NY I tried again, to at least get a report on record, but the 800 apparently can't be called from outside CT as I got a recording to that effect.

Was it just a busy weekend for the poachers, was DEP having technical difficulties, or is their line always busy? If the latter they won't likely be collecting much data for CO resource allocation if they can't take in reports.

[AaronJasper]

yeah its a joke. i am sure that we also called in the same thing. we can often and either we get the same as you ... a busy signal. sometimes they even tell us that no one can come ??? we need to get on them and start really complaining. i can believe that they were so negligent. they even READ the SIGNS and STILL kept the fish. i am sure that if the same co was called he would have given them a warning and he most likely would have told them to keep the fish and eat them. its sad when these fish have so much going against them that other SPORTSMEN ??? are adding to the problem. its also really good that he is teaching his children that they dont need to obey the laws as well. good parenting

[Dave]

This behavior is absolutely incomprehensible. I've never heard of such blatant disregard. For those with cameras, we got to catch these guys in the act, and really get in their faces. That may mean getting out of the river for a few mintutes, tracking where they parked, and getting the details so that we can CATALOG the poachers and have them literally "blacklisted". Just a few of these guys can decimate an entire river system, because they are usually gluttons that have no respect for others nor for themselves. Perhaps even more agitating, they don't appreciate the sport of fishing. . .it's merely a chance for them to boost their egos by killing something beautiful.

I've been border-line ready to snap on a few people last year because of the degree that they disobey the signs. If fact, a few times I've even wanted to put up a few of my own "toxic chemical/PCB" signs that would discourage poachers from taking fish in fear that they themselves would get poisoned. I'm not a greedy person, and I love taking friends, or new acquaintances to some of the sweet spots that I fish a lot. However, there are times I wish I had an electric fence to govern the river. Something really has to be done.

[Nymphmeister]

I agree that just because the CO present during the incident handled it poorly doesn't mean that that all or even many are incompetent or lazy. Most of the ones I've met take their job seriously and do their best, and that goes for Police too. And I know that the CT DEP is the most underfunded in the country. But letting them keep the fish was so ridiculous and sends such a bad message I cannot even fathom what he was thinking. Not only does it show the illegal fishermen that there was almost no consequence to their actions, but it undermines the faith of fishermen present at the scene and who heard about it thru other channels. More than one person has commented to me since then that they won't even bother to call the Poacher's Hotline at the DEP because they now feel nothing will happen, maybe a slap on the wrist at best. I realize that illegal immigrants with no ID are a nightmare to deal with from a legal standpoint, but this had absolutely no bearing on letting them keep the fish, whether it was was 4, 40 or 400. For the record, Donny Ball and Paula, who were both present for the entire incident, said there was a cooler full of fish, a 5 gallon bucket packed to the lid, 2 grocery store plastic bags filled with fish, and a garbage bag partially filled with more. From what I heard, it sounded like bass were the predominate catch, but there were some nice trout in there too. These people knew exactly what they were doing, they had the 5 gallon bucket sealed up in their van, and the bags of fish half hidden in the woods. And Aaron was there at the tail end of this, he was dropping off a client. I don't think most people are generalizing this to people in law enforcement, just to that particular CO who did a bad job handling this. I think we are all in agreement on that.

Anyone who is unhappy about this incident should contact Bill Hyatt at the DEP and let him know you are disgusted with the way the incident was handled by the CO- if nothing else, he should have taken their fish and dumped them into the river right in front of them. This poaching problem is growing, it's not going away, so we need to get a handle on it before it really spirals out of control.

[AaronJasper]

torrey ... care to put a number on how we can reach bill hyatt??

[Catch 22]

The online Angler's Guide can be found here. http://www.ct.gov/dep/lib/dep/fishin...uide_part1.pdf

Numerous contactnumbers are listed there.

Jeff