jcollins wrote:Not that I have ever caught one, but how do you enforce a 3 per year limit? Just curious.
Thanks,
Catch limits are very common out here on the West coast, and it's pretty much an "on-your-honor" system. Here in WA, I'm not familiar with any yearly limits, but we do have daily limits on just about everything. You get a Catch Record Card with your license. You have to record everything you catch on the card.
The way they make it enforcable is by very strictly punishing you for minor reporting discrepencies. For example, lets say you're allowed four of a particular fish per day. You catch four, but forget the mark the last one down. As you're pulling the boat out at the ramp, an enforcement officers comes over and inspects your catch and notices the discrepency. Even though you have not exceeded your daily limit, you will still be ticketed for not reporting correctly. And god help you if you don't have your license on you while fishing. Most of those type of infractions are relatively minor with only small monetary civil penalties that do not go on your record and do not carry jail time. However, some of the laws are criminal and can in fact land you in jail if you break them.
I have an associate who was fly fishing in one of the rivers here. Apparently it's illegal to fish before sunrise on that particular river. He looked up and saw light in the sky, and figured he was ok. He tossed out his line just as a DFW officer came by. Becuase he tossed his line out 5 minutes before legal sunrise, he was arrested, charged, and booked into the county jail. He posted bail and is currently free, but is likely facing 30 days in jail because it is his third criminal offense. He's hoping that when it goes to court, he will be able to convince the judge to give him some leniancy, but either way, it will cost him thousands.
Most people who break the rules around here do so out of simple ignorance. They don't know the rules, so they don't follow them. Or they run afoul of the letter of the law, while still trying to obey the spirit of it. The one positive in the whole thing is that physical enforcement is minimal and predictable. DFW officers don't generally have boats. They typically hang out at busy launching ramps and simply check every single boat as it comes out of the water. You can usually avoid their prying by simply saying, "I didn't fish today". So long as they don't actually see you carrying a dead fish up the ramp, they usually just say thank you and go on to the next guy (I think that by saying you didn't fish, you eliminate their probable cause to check your boat). They seem to focus MUCH more on fresh waterways than salt. In 25 years of boating on Puget Sound, I've only seen a DFW boat once, and he was actually working a line of his own at the time. If you depart from a private marina or dock, there is generally no chance of being checked. They seem to keep busy enough just responding to specific reports or complaints of poaching. I once saw someone crabbing off the dock in front my office on a day when the season was closed. I called it in, and the next day, the officer was there, checking it out. Of course, the crabber wasn't.
That said, I still do my best to follow the letter of the law, and always respect the spirit of it. Their goal is to preserve the fisheries for future generations, and I am 100% in support of that.