Another story involving one of the two superior court judges mentioned above and the WDFW.

The judge owned a nice large chunk of property on the local river that I used to fish quite a bit. After fishing on his private property and catching/release quite a few fish, I stopped by the house to let him know that there were some fish down there. I knew that this judge had never caught a steelhead, so I figured I'd show him the ropes down there.

He get's all excited, grabs his yeller Eagle Claw rod and coffee grinder reel and away we go. We get down to the river and rig up his rod with a some bait under a Flow-At. Steelhead are porpoising all over the slush so I know this won't take too long. I pointed at where he should cast, instructed him to freespool his coffee grinder and set the hook when the Flow-At went under the water.

Took all of about 2.3 seconds after his cast until his Flow-At just shot under water. Fish on! His first steelhead. A nice fish about 10 pounds comes quickly to the shore, where before I realize what is about to happen, he pounces on the fish and bonks it on the head with a rock. No biggie...except that it was a WILD fish....and wild fish were not legal to keep on this river at this time during this particular year.

Uh....... Crap. Didn't see that one coming.

I politely tell this judge that one is not allowed to keep unclipped wild fish. He promptly ignores me and casts back out the half-bat that was left over and pulled out of this dead fishes mouth.

Another 3.4 seconds later, Flow-At down, fish in, and killed under my protest.

As a high schooler, I wasn't about to tell a judge what the laws were, so I left it at that. He took his two fish home and he was as proud as anyone I've ever seen on the river.

Time goes by........a couple of months.

I'm fishing with my buddy and I hook and land a small hatchery steelhead. Nice little chrome fish (for that time of year), but I didn't want it and was going to release it. Held it for the Grip-N-Grin and the fish leapt out of my hands and straight in to the sand. Not cool. To make it worse, as we were trying to wrestle this land-locked flopping hatchery fish, my buddy accidently kicked it in the head during the scuffle. Dead fish.

Oh well, no worries. I'll just punch the fish. I go to grab the pen that I always had tied on to a string to my vest to punch my card, and notice that the pen is gone. Crap. I try using the end of a slinky to write on the card. Yeah, as if. Oh well. I tried to punch the fish and didn't think anything of it past that.

We eventually left that area and went up river where we ran in to our high school teacher. He asked me how we were doing and I said that I had one in the truck and off we went fishing. Coming back to the truck a few hours later, I notice two officers standing next to my truck. Two WDFW officers. One of them is /was the eventual head of the WDFW Enforcement.

I instantly realize that I didn't punch my fish, but since I have nothing to write with, I just accept my fate.....

Anyways, as I get there, the junior guys asks/tells me: "Got any fish in the truck?" I instantly realize that he's been talking to my teacher, as he's trying to get me to say "no". I say "yes", but then tell him that I didn't punch the fish because my pen fell off of the string on my vest and show him the string with the loop on it.

Apparently, that doesn't mean crap, as they pull out the fish and measure the dorsal fin to verify that it was a hatchery fish. Back in the day, the dorsal fin on an unclipped fish had to be greater than this white card that the WDFW issued in order for it to be "wild". Fortunately for me, the fin was about 2mm under the card, so it was *just* a hatchery fish.

Anyways, the officers ask to search my truck, which I let them do.

Junior Dillhole looks everywhere and in searching behind and underneath my seat, pulls out a half-used golf pencil and asks me what that was and why I didn't use it to punch the fish.

I politely tell him that I'm on the high school varsity golf team, that it was a lost golf pencil and that I obviously didn't look under my damn seat for lost pencils to mark my fish with. He then proceeded to lecture me about how I could have used some pencil lead to mark the card with and I told him I was using a slinky and not hard lead. Next came the "use the tip of a hook to mark you card", followed by you name it. I was doomed.

The senior guy then gave me the lecture of: "I know you and your buddy catch a lot of fish. You only have X marked. Either you are lying to us that you don't keep a lot of fish, or you are poachers that finally got caught not punching fish."

I always punched (and still do) my fish. Bastards. I was pissed.

End result was a $105 citation for not punching a hatchery fish.

So, the next day, I go in to see the judge mentioned above. I walk in to his office with the citation in hand, and he just looks up and says "What did do now?"

I told him my story.

Citation got dropped but I had to pay a $5 "processing" fee.