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Poachers

23K views 193 replies 63 participants last post by  MGTom 
#1 ·
#72 ·
#triggered

I've been to the banquets, the feel good crowd is a real phenomenon.
I sort of agree. The folks who get most of the credit are the ones pulling out their check books. The ones doing the actual work are often disposable and replaceable.

It is just basic economics, but it saddens me that the haves will always be able to buy their way to goodness when there are so many "nameless" folks sacrificing their lives, blood, sweat, and tears to the effort.
 
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#71 · (Edited)
In fact, I just got an email from one at WSC! He is proclaiming that he is not fishing this year! Incredible conservation effort!

Meanwhile many of us have made the same fucking decision quietly and without fanfare. What is WSC, WFC, or CCA going to do to help? The same thing they’ve been doing for the last ten years. Oh, what a help it has been.
 
#76 ·
I have genuine question.
If you're fishing a stocked stream, and you limit out (or any stream that allows retention for that matter). Are you able to keep fishing with a barbless hook and just catch and release? Or from a LEO's pov, they can't prove you catching and releasing so it's just a no-go?
 
#86 ·
Also, just FYI, but I don't know of any "stocked" streams, at least around here. ESA listings ended all that. Most river fish are wild. Once and a while I'll find a clipped fish, from the salmon or steelhead programs, that didn't migrate, and that would be stocked.
I'm down in oregon :)
There's two very heavily stocked streams relatively close to me.
 
#93 ·
I wish they would do that in my area. This is from 2 different systems. The snag gear was at a spot with signs up saying it's closed to fishing. The power bait is a river closed to retention. I have been sending to the TIP Hotline and hearing nothing back. I didn't have my phone at the time but saw knife cut harvested fish in a no harvest river. I need to start beating people up again. This is why I hate people so much. If you are a snagger look out for my bald brown head, you might get your ass beat.
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Yeah I know.... Great way to get shot, everyone says that and here I stand..#fuckasnagger
 
#96 ·
I wish they would do that in my area. This is from 2 different systems. The snag gear was at a spot with signs up saying it's closed to fishing. The power bait is a river closed to retention. I have been sending to the TIP Hotline and hearing nothing back. I didn't have my phone at the time but saw knife cut harvested fish in a no harvest river. I need to start beating people up again. This is why I hate people so much. If you are a snagger look out for my bald brown head, you might get your ass beat. View attachment 295978 View attachment 295979 View attachment 295980
Yeah I know.... Great way to get shot, everyone says that and here I stand..#fuckasnagger
Couple of cycles ago of pinks and fishing the green. I was at a run and a gut was on other side. He would toss gear all the way to my side. I saw that it was a triple hook, he would rip it through the run, then run off.
 
#101 ·
Maybe you should join their forces and become a WDFW enforcement officer.
My son was working on that just before COVID hit. They are relying on him heavily at his current law enforcement job right now however.
Lately I've been wondering about a river keeper system. I don't really know the English system, but someone like me who's on the river a lot and can keep an eye on the river, poachers, dumping, spills, clean up, water quality monitoring ect.
 
#103 ·
Well shit. I'm pissed. Took a box of weekend meals the neighbor made over to a friend. He's kinda house/ yard bound, and lives near where I saw the poacher.
Water Water resources Plant community Vertebrate Plant

Road surface Sunlight Water Landscape Geological phenomenon

Still don't know the disposition, but we now have a set of eyes, who's friends with the sheriffs office, to keep watch. He only lives about 40 yards from the river with a great view. This is not normal at all.
 
#105 ·
Well shit. I'm pissed. Took a box of weekend meals the neighbor made over to a friend. He's kinda house/ yard bound, and lives near where I saw the poacher.
View attachment 296193
View attachment 296194
Still don't know the disposition, but we now have a set of eyes, who's friends with the sheriffs office, to keep watch. He only lives about 40 yards from the river with a great view. This is not normal at all.
Bait hooks ripped out of their guts or what?
 
#123 ·
#142 ·
I have a ridiculous wannabe-poacher story. Back in the early 1980s, I knew this guy I nicknamed, “Howweird.” Though I’ve known hippies who were very smart, intelligent, and capable people, H-W was what some might refer to as a “dirty hippie.”

So one day he tells me and some of my friends that he got himself a big salmon net to poach some fish out from the Hiram Chittenden fish ladder. His plan was to sneak out late at night and get himself a salmon. I don’t recall if we actually said anything to him (maybe brought up the matter of trespassing?), but I do know the look on our faces said, “I don’t know about that.”

The next time we saw him, we had to ask. Apparently, he did sneak out there some time after midnight and jumped down onto a metal platform where he could dip net without anyone seeing him. What he didn’t foresee was that doing so lit off an alarm.

Dude near shit his pants and ran off without his net. Pretty certain Howweird swore off trying it again.
 
#143 ·
Kerry gets it.

And yes I know how absurd I sound like I own the river or something. I realise I don't. I just lose my marbles sometimes when faced with not only giant crowds but the zero etiquette that goes with it. Case in point is that I was fishing via drift boat the other day and came upon another drift boat anchored on some prime water. We all passed by without fishing that spot with a healthy buffer as to not low hole anybody. That same boat load of folks had no problem casting within feet of our boat in the next hole multiple times as they passed. Even anchoring briefly to make sure there were no silvers hiding under our boat as their spinners and floats nearly bounced off the sides. I don't want to fish in a dog eat dog fisticuffs over a parking spot world. I've caught enough fish in life to die happy if I never touch another so it's easy to be courteous. It just pisses me off at times to exercise this courtesy and not have it even attempted in return.
wait, i thought the more people fishing the more protected the river is.

those guys were just trying to catch those fish under your boat so you were not scaring or abusing them if you catch em! #conservation . you invaded the fishes safe space by anchoring there.
 
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