State law frowns on interfering with lawful fishing

Honest fishing-doers can’t agree on whether to present an award to their unknown soul brother who sicced the cops on two marina employees for buzzing his boat in the Intracoastal Waterway at Daytona Beach.

It looks like we’ll have to settle for a sitting ovation and a beer toast in honor of So-and-So, who fought back with his phone: As the criminals darted out of their marina and ploughed rings of wake around him, he camerized them.

Then he hollered “Cop.” Imagine very hard and you can almost hear him: “Cop! Cop!”

Now came Heather Grant, a wildlife officer of the Florida Fish (F) and Wildlife (W) Conservation (C) Commission. That one scolded the villains but did not send for backup, bind their wrists and throw them in jail.

Most members of the Fish or Cut Bait Society would have done all that, then dropped the keys in a sewer. They wish the officer had thrown the book at the bums, even though it isn’t much of a book.

Harassing or interfering with law-abiding fishing-doers is a second degree misdemeanor in this state, with a maximum penalty of 30 days in a cage. Kid stuff! Our crew favors putting such scoundrels in a crab trap as bait instead of giving them the de luxe comfort of a jail cell.

“It’s a shame that they were caught and released. That’s one reason we couldn’t get the support we needed for an awards presentation,” Manuel Tiller said in announcing the ambivalence of the outfit where he is chairman of the steering committee.

“Another reason is we don’t know who the honorable victim So-and-So is because the FWC isn’t telling. Yet another reason is that we probably can’t make them tell. Same goes for the bad guys because they weren’t charged with a crime.

“I suspect the FWC’s thinking is that if the good and bad guys know each other’s names, something inappropriate might happen — if you know what I mean.”

Tiller said the sense of the Society is to disagree respectfully with the officer’s discretionary decision not to arrest the evil-doers.

“We say they don’t deserve the break they were given,” he said. “Other than that, we wonder if they were the same ones who did the same thing to a fishing-doer in that area a few years ago.”

A research committee was selected to find out. Cleat Bollard, its chairman, was not optimistic: “If those prior wrongdoers also were merely told off by a wildlife officer who let them go, there may not be a permanent record of the incident. If it turns out they were the same ones who did the same thing in January, we suppose the FWC will regret not busting them both times.”

If it did, the book not thrown would be heavier, though not heavy enough. For two such offenses within three years, the law raises the second offense to a first degree misdemeanor. Its maximum penalty is a year in jail and suspension of the villains’ own fishing licenses.

We would bet that if those fiends do fishing, they have no licenses to suspend, no respect for law. We would bet that on their days off they poach oysters. Someone should investigate that.

Another good part of the story is that So-and-So, the victim, knew that harassing him and interfering with his fishing was a crime. We also like that he wouldn’t hold still for it and he smartly recorded it.

Such evidence indicates that if the harassers were put on trial, they would not have much of a defense. There might be a seige by a hostile mob of hay forkers and tiki torchers.

Just imagine the brave sheriff bowlegging out there and staring them down. What tension! Phew. Did you know it’s against state law to harass or interfere with lawful fishing folk? We didn’t know until a few years ago, when we noticed that other case.

We were very proud of our state, but then we found out there are laws like it in many states where fishing is holy.

For example, a few minutes of random keyboard tapping turned up laws like ours in North Carolina, Ohio, Montana, Iowa and Louisiana. They apply to hunting, too. Surely there are more. A case in Michigan, where penalties also are sadly too light, was decided by a jury.

That crime happened in 2010 at Huron City. A pair of brothers who owned land on opposite sides of the Willow River had a history of playing catch with stones that zipped scarily close to fishing-doers on the water.

At last, two victims were fed up and decided not to take it any more. The stone-throwing brothers were convicted in court at Bad Axe, a real town.

They were sentenced to five days in the Huron County jail, fined $1,010 each and put on probation for 20 months — two fishing seasons’ worth of time.

We think that’s like being made to stand in a corner for an hour, or to write “We mustn’t do it again” 100 times on a chalkboard.

It’s too bad the Fish or Cut Bait Society doesn’t have a chapter in Bad Axe. Our lawyer would have filed an amicus curiae brief urging the judge to make the convicts serve their time in a submerged crab trap.

Well, it’s probably more accurate to say that our national headquarters in Miami would have urged the Bad Axe chapter to consider butting in if it wouldn’t cost anything.

To avoid burdensome legal fees, we would have advised the Bad Axe chapter to grant membership to some lawyer who owns a rod and reel, and stick that person with the chairmanship, or chairwomanship, of a legal affairs committee.

That’s our strategy here at national headquarters, where a gent aptly named Counsel leads such a committee.

Counsel is well known as a defense attorney in the overtime parking division of Traffic Court. Outsiders might wonder what knowledge he has of maritime or fishing law.

Actually none, but that makes it easy for him to tell others what they should do and how they should think about issues like this.

“If So-and-So, the harassment victim in Daytona, had retained me, I would have filed a formal demand that the FWC prosecute the creeps who disturbed him and frightened the fish away,” Counsel said.

“I suppose their lawyers would have sought a plea bargain. Our legal team would have objected. We would have demanded maximum action by the State Attorney, because how low a lowlife purposely drags a wake on a respectable fishing-doer?”

If we were cops, jurors and judges, you could count on us to deal sternly with anyone like that.

Swear us in. We’ll show ‘em.

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