Baker Lake Harsh Wardens

[Bodofish]

Well the moment you've all been waiting for...

It took me all of 4 minutes for the judge to throw the ticket out.

First, the ticket was for retained 3 sockeye and continuing to fish, however, since i had 2 marked on my card, the warden apparently wrote the wrong ticket and it cannot hold up

Secondly, apparently the judge knows a thing or two about the fishin rule book because when i told him that my buddy got the bite on his rod, set the hook and handed off after a few seconds because of the double, he clearly stated that because there is nothing in the rule book clarifying who must mark a fish, the ticket is bogus.

He mentioned that with something like this it is kind of difficult to decide, he said if it were my fish, on my rod and i marked it on my buddies card, then he would have kept the ticket because that is obviously not his fish, but the situation we were in, the judge said it was totally reasonable to mark it on his card.

I told him i felt like i was stealing his fish if i marked it because he got the bite, but was forced to handoff, and he totally understood what happened and threw out the ticket, and left me with something like be careful next time, don't actually land the fish, if it happens again just keep it tight and wait, then hand back off when the other fisherman is free and ready for him to bring it to the net.

Thank God

Yippy!!!!! It's the way it's supposed to go. I've had a judge throw out all of an Enforcement Officers tickets for the entire week and ripped him a new one in court for wasting her time.

[BassDood]

Criticizing our elected representatives and officials is a time-honored part of the American culture, dating back to the American Revolution.

With all due respect to Marc, I think it’s good to have an outlet for people to express their frustrations. Representatives of WDFW I’m sure have read the thread and have a greater appreciation of the frustrations some anglers deal with, and, people that have been following this thread have a greater understanding of the rules and regs that apply to this fishery. It has certainly given me pause to make sure that I’m following the regulations correctly, and to that extent I think it’s been very helpful for anglers. Our Regs ARE extremely complex, I don’t think many would argue that point.

I’m pretty sure every person that has commented on this thread would agree that we want WDFW wardens to find and ticket violators of the regs, especially violations that are blatant and severely impact our fisheries. We want people to play by the rules, but it’s hard when the rules get too difficult to follow. Thankfully, we do have a way for anglers to contest tickets they believe are unfair. I think all and all this has been a fascinating example of how our Founding Fathers created an amazing system of government with checks and balances to protect the people from the risk of tyranny of those in positions of power.

For the most part, this thread has been a pretty fair dialog, and I thank everyone that has kept things civil.

JMHO.

Very well put, Mike. Also, great job FF. Glad it worked out.

[RiverChromeGS]

woohoo

[strider43]

fishenfreak,how fast do you troll youe hoochie/smile blade set up for Baker lake Sockeys?