I met Mitch at the power bar Monday PM and he made it a point to tell me this story. Saturday PM as I left the river with a broken 6wt 5 Asians arrived at the bar with big spin rods. It's time VDGIF shows the flag.

Helping a poacher
Sunday evening found me at one of my favorite striper/catfish holes near Fredricksburg. There was a group of people swimming/fishing downriver about a hundred yards from me, but they weren't effecting the bite as I was slaying them. One young lad (probably around 16) works his way upstream fishing and eventually gets to me. We talked for about 15 minutes....a little about family a little about fishing....turns out that he is a new dad too, but doesn't get to see his baby much because her relatives (I think he said from El Salvador) "don't like Mexicans much".

He spoke English pretty well (90%) and as we talked I continued to fish and was steady catching small rockfish. I explained that the fish were upriver to spawn and explained the regs stressing that they weren't legal to keep until the 16th. I showed him the plug I was using and he studied the way it was fished.


SO, Last night (Monday) I head back to the same spot to work the schoolies again. And sure enough there he is catching a nice 16" rockfish. At first I was happy for him, but as I got closer I noticed that he was dragging the fish onshore next to his bucket to unhook it. When I got to him I told him again that you can't keep stripers now. His response was "but I'm going to eat this one". After several attempts to get him to throw the fish back he noticed that I was getting quite upset. He threw the striper in his bucket along with the half dozen he already had and left.

I feel so betrayed for teaching and helping this kid figure out how to catch some fish. Now the striper population is going to suffer because I know that it's just a matter of time until the whole group (about eight people)he was fishing with Sunday will be back and they all will be plugging and keeping.

I have called the VDGIF several time in the past about this spot and they have never shown up. The first question that they ask is "do you know if they speak English" and if the answer is no or I don't know then they will do nothing. Last night I didn't have a phone on me anyways and getting into a fight with a sixteen year old over poaching isn't a charge that I want to catch.

Anyone believe that VMRC would do anything as far upriver as Fredericksburg since technically rockfish are their fish?


Mitch

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Hope you're fishing.