# Sad day on the river



## Fisherman 3234 (Sep 8, 2008)

So I get a phone call from one of my buddies that I work with at Bass Pro in Rossford, he says he is at one of the dams on Maumee river and was just watching guys fish when he saw two foreign looking guys coming up out of a river with a rope (not a stringer) with about 25 flatheads on it. They had one that was about 45 lbs, and 2 other fish that were easily over 35 inchs Now my buddy told me that he saw the guys walk out in the river with their fishing poles, but with no bait and saw that they had a rather large net (seine) sticking out of a back pack. When they went out in the river, they went behind a small island where a decently well known hole is. What these idiots had done is netted all of those fish out of this hole (this section of maumee river is about 3 ft average depth.) When my buddy confronted them, they acted like they didn't understand english and left the area immediately. My buddy called the ODNR and reported them. This has started to become a real problem on maumee river. It seems like every other day I go out there I see individuals doing things that are illegal out on the river. I have reported many a time to the wildlife officers about some of the things that go on out there and I don't really know if anything is getting done. It just frustrates me to see such a great fishery get thrashed by people who are out there who don't follow the rules.


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## Fisherman 3234 (Sep 8, 2008)

Have any of you other guys experienced something like this before on some of the waters that you fish?


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## pendog66 (Mar 23, 2005)

yes unfortunately but nothing to the point where theres been 25 flatties on a rope. personally if i was your buddy i would of made sure those guys didnt leave


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## Fisherman 3234 (Sep 8, 2008)

It's a real tough situation. I've fished other river systems in Ohio and it just seems up here it's real bad due to you can walk out literally across the entire river and find holes with fish in them. There have been a few times last summer where I would go down below the dam to fish, and there were non speaking men down there fishing shoulder, to shoulder across the entire river, moving down stream. They were keeping everything that they caught (Carp, suckers, sheephead, catfish, smallmouth, you name it). Also, up here in northwestern ohio when someone catches a big fish such as a flathead, I would say 80% of the time they keep the fish. They either put it in their pond or eat them, or kill them by taking it to a bait shop to show off. Now if I were fishing somewhere like the GMR I would say that I've seen alot less people keeping flatheads to take home everytime I'm down there. I just don't know what the deal is up here. I'm probably going to contact the ODNR today and report it again just to make sure, because the weekend is coming up and that's when it really becomes a circus down there.


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## bassattacker (Mar 14, 2007)

yeah i would have been tee'd off about that and it does now, especially since i havnt been heavily into flathead fishing that long, it seems this year thigns have gotten bad, havnt ran into anything like that up here yet, but last weekend me and my buddy went to 3 different spots that i know of and every single one of them had a ton of people in them, a year ago was no problem for two of the holes, this year seems the fishing pressure has been turned up 5 notches, the spot had alteast 20 people in it, fishing pressure is way up as well...


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## Fisherman 3234 (Sep 8, 2008)

Just left a message for the wildlife officer of that county to watch over that dam a little more and try to bust some of these guys.


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## wabi (Jun 14, 2008)

Haven't had any experiences of seeing people fish illegally this year, but after watching some guys take over the limit on trout last year I decided to start carrying a camera along with me. 
I did have one experience of catching some teenagers destroying property at our local lake (state park) this year. I grabbed the camera, made sure they were aware I was taking pics of them, and they quickly stopped the destruction and exited the park. 
The picks weren't really good enough to ID them and prove they were damaging the property (they were removing huge rip-rap stones from the face of the dam and rolling them down the back of the dam into a water hole where people were actually fishing!), but it served the purpose of scaring off the teens, and hopefully made them nervous and gave them time to think about what they were doing.


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## bigdogsteve-o (Aug 26, 2005)

if it was me I would gaurantee that all those fish would have been back in the water. and it would have gotten ugly.


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## catfish_hunter (May 31, 2005)

Next time you see Bullshit like this going on, dont even say anything to them call the DNR, AND GET THEIR LICENSE NUMBER when they do leave...That way the DNR can comfront them theirselves...Just an idea...


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## Fisherman 3234 (Sep 8, 2008)

Trust me if I was there the fish would have gone back in the water too and I would be sitting in jail right now.


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## dip (Apr 5, 2004)

those boys had to be purdy strong to carry that much weight! sheesh with all this internet war talk they might be some bad hombres!


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## Pole Squeezer (Jun 21, 2008)

It's easy to be an internet Rambo from afar. The best thing to do is to let the law enforcement folks handle it. I don't know what the limit is on flatheads, but 25 fish in the 30lb range is ridiculous. I'm not against keeping some flatheads for food, because they are a cleaner cat, than the others, and are very sought after in the deep south. However i'm not going to risk my life by trying to detain a couple of guys who seem desparate enough to haul 25 huge cats home, no matter how much i love fishing. leave it to the professionals.


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