A game warden and I, a reserve sheriff deputy who was assigned to work with the game warden for several days, were driving around when we got a call that a person was fishing near the Moccasin Creek Fish Hatchery ponds in Tuolumne County, which is a no-no.

You can fish near the spillway, but not the ponds. Looking around we could see several people walking near the ponds, but no one was fishing — rainbow trout live in the ponds until they are planted in California’s streams and rivers  

When the fish hatchery is ready to plant fish in a stream, they will load up trucks that have a big water tank that holds the fish, and then drive the trucks to the fish new home, which could be a lake or a river.

Here they will take the fish out of the trucks in buckets and walk to the stream, river, or pond and drop them in.

Many times fishermen would follow these trucks to see where they drop off the fish. Then they will park their vehicle, wait until the trucks leave, then fish for the limit of the day and then go home — five fish a day is the limit.

We then got a call that there is a person fishing near a reservoir, and to check out how many fish he has caught. If it is more than five, we should cite him for over the limit, but he only had one fish in his fishing bucket.

We told him when it starts to get dark, he would have to quit and go home — there is no fishing after dark.

Around 9:00pm, we got a call that there was a person fishing at the same reservoir. When we arrived, it was the same person fishing that we told to go home when it starts to get dark.

Again we told him to go home and we will be back. We left and in an hour we came back — he was still fishing. We wrote him a citation, which we found out later, cost him $500.00.

How many times does a person have to be warned before they get themselves into trouble?

On the 28th of April, trout fishing in Northern California will open until the 15th of November.

A California fishing license for a year is $33.35 if you are a resident. A non resident license is $89.50 for a full year.