We were at Rock Creek Lake for a week, and had a morning spot to fish where we could all limit out in about 15 minutes with nice fat two pound and larger trout. There were plenty of three to seven pounders that we would catch here and there as well.
We get to our spot and there's a guy there with two or three really nice fish in the over 3 pound class on a stringer. My wife's dad said we could wait for a few minutes for the guy to catch his limit and then we could fish rather than horn in on his spot. So the guy would catch a nice fat two pounder and rip the power baited hook out of it's mouth with pliers and throw a bleeding and dying fish into the water to float around.
Every time he'd do this I was getting more and more ticked off, my father in law was too but he was restraining me from saying anything to the guy. I had enough at about the tenth fish he threw back, I said that's it. Don was trying to intervene and my wife told him to let me be, he wasn't going to be able to stop me. I walked up to the fat slob and told him he was all done. He told me he was not, he hadn't caught his limit. I told him if he wanted a limit gather up a couple of the floaters that were three feet away from him, but pack up his stuff and get out. He got belligerent and told me I couldn't make him go, he asked me "what are you going to do shoot me?". I told him I was going to throw his fat butt in the water and keep him here until my wife could go up to the store to call and get a warden here.
He wasn't happy but he packed his things up and left, we collected over ten of the dying fish that were beautiful fat fish and caught a couple more and went back to the cabin to eat some trout.
Now my question for wardens since I've seen the habit of throwing mangled smaller but nice eating fish back so as to keep only really big ones is, what is the legal position a warden can take so that I know where my lines are?
If it's something a warden can do something about I'll hold a gun on a guy and wait for a warden to get there.
We get to our spot and there's a guy there with two or three really nice fish in the over 3 pound class on a stringer. My wife's dad said we could wait for a few minutes for the guy to catch his limit and then we could fish rather than horn in on his spot. So the guy would catch a nice fat two pounder and rip the power baited hook out of it's mouth with pliers and throw a bleeding and dying fish into the water to float around.
Every time he'd do this I was getting more and more ticked off, my father in law was too but he was restraining me from saying anything to the guy. I had enough at about the tenth fish he threw back, I said that's it. Don was trying to intervene and my wife told him to let me be, he wasn't going to be able to stop me. I walked up to the fat slob and told him he was all done. He told me he was not, he hadn't caught his limit. I told him if he wanted a limit gather up a couple of the floaters that were three feet away from him, but pack up his stuff and get out. He got belligerent and told me I couldn't make him go, he asked me "what are you going to do shoot me?". I told him I was going to throw his fat butt in the water and keep him here until my wife could go up to the store to call and get a warden here.
He wasn't happy but he packed his things up and left, we collected over ten of the dying fish that were beautiful fat fish and caught a couple more and went back to the cabin to eat some trout.
Now my question for wardens since I've seen the habit of throwing mangled smaller but nice eating fish back so as to keep only really big ones is, what is the legal position a warden can take so that I know where my lines are?
If it's something a warden can do something about I'll hold a gun on a guy and wait for a warden to get there.