Poacher got busted today

[Stillrunning]

Originally Posted by parishht

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

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?

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.