I hereby offer free (well, maybe you'd have to take me fishing) legal services to anybody who gets a ticket for bonking such a fish.

My interpretation of the regs is that an adipose has to have a healed scar. IMHO, a new fin growing from that scar is not a violation of the regs, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a judge or jury who would disagree.

Of course, it's unlikely that you'd find a game warden unreasonable enough to write you up either, tho we've got a guy over here in Tri-Cities who would ticket his own mother for it!