Last Friday, we were fishing the ocean out of Illwaco. The bite was good with a variety of shakers, wild and hatchery fish and we eventually limited out on hatchery silvers. However, I ran into a puzzling situation not once but 3 times that day.

We had 3 very nice silvers to the boat that had healed over adipose finclips WITH a tiny(and I do mean tiny) fin re-generating and growing. The regenerated fin was maybe a quarter inch tall and half an inch long. We let all 3 go not wanting to chance a ticket even though these were clearly sloppily marked hatchery fish.

We've caught enough wild fish in 20+ years of fishing to recognize a true wild fish adipose fin so don't lay into me about not knowing wild versus hatchery.

According to the regs., "only fish with a clipped adipose fin may be retained".......well these fish had a healed over clip AND a puny, re-generated fin. So, what's a guy to do?

These were nice fish. I don't need a fish that bad to risk a ticket and the question is more one of curiosity than true frustration. I'd just be curious to hear a game warden's take on the situation as a case could be made for both keeping and letting the fish go.

Anybody else run into this?