HEY STILL

He also never said he was fishing for strippers, it legal to fish for bluefish outside the 3 mi limit and bluefish are plentiful during this time of the year here.

A lot of the charters bring in both species. So by him saying he was fishing doesn't mean he was fishing illegally for strippers.

Well do you really think they went out looking for blue fish? If so why didn't state that in his post when explaining what happened. I do not know the guy so I'm not going to judge what he did but he should have known he was pushing the limit by doing what he did.

How on earth did I miss this thread?

For the guys living away from the striper coast, you have no idea how silly some of these rules get. It's all been pretty well explained here in this thread. I do a fair amount of seabass and tog fishing in the winter. Sometimes bluefish are the targert as well. We've caught those pesky rockfish as much as 28 miles offshore this time of year. We just throw them back and keep after out intnended target.:zip:

I have a buddy who got stopped last Saturday. 4 miles off the beach. He's a charter. The fines go up after ten fish. He was legal for size & number, but busted on location. Those twelve fish will cost him between 6,000 and 12,000. The officer doesn't write the ticket, it comes from the FEDS. He's just watching the mail box now to see how bad its gonna be...

:oh: :sad: :devil: 12 to 6 grand....ouch

I have a friend fighting some federal tickets right now as well. The fines started out at $1700 & $2400. He was going to just pay them so he didn't have to take time off, and run all over the state going to federal courts. He paid the $1700 one and now they're trying to hit him over $7000 on the other one and give him a criminal record. So we have to fight this BS down here as well. And it all started because he was anchored outside of the boundry markers, but turns out the markers were in the wrong place and he was 50 yards inside of the preserve. He had 1 fish over his 1 day's limit, but had been out for 3. And in FLORIDA you are allowed up to a 2 days limit of reef fish if you have benn out for 2 or more days.

Here in Ma. all Strippers have to be caught within the 3 mile limit, They are a Game Fish in Fed water now up here.

Well, I guess it's back to the surf fishing for me.:sand:

Anyway, I was looking on the net for information and found this website:

http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text....0.1.1.6.1.1.1



It seams that anyone could be written up for being in the EEZ waters with a
fishing rod on board, unless you have a permit to fish in the EEZ.
Any boat can get a permit.
So does that mean that the charters that go on tuna trips have the permits?

You need a permit for tuna in NC whether you catch tuna inside or outside the 3 mi area (EEZ) but there is no permit in the EEZ for striper.

Fishing itself is not illegal in the EEZ its the targeting of fish that have been giving the title of gamefish by the federal goverment for protection in most cases. We tog, flounder, spade fish all the time in the EZZ without any problems. The problem this time of year is that the stripers are running and 99.99% of the people are fishing for stripers. If you have stripers in your boat do not get caught with any line in the water in the EZZ as the CG will automatically assume they were caught in the EZZ. I have a hard time believing these charter captins getting caught and pleeding inocent because I have seen them knownly catch fish over the line. If they don't know they are over the line then maybe they should not be chartering boats. In this last case the CG said in the article I read that they watched the charter fish 4 miles from shore.

You know reading this thread brings one question to mind, Do we still live in a free country? I mean come on now, you have to have a permit to even catch a fish. Not just a fishing license to support your fishery, but a full on permit. This is getting carried away now.