I don't fish many tournies anymore on Fork but if I did I would start checking the tales before they went into the live well. What if you put one in there and didn't see the tale was already trimmed? That would suck!

Hard to stop bad behavior without consequences...... Unless it's somebody the powers that be want to protect Was the guy in a red Basscat with a neon hat??

A felony seems a bit much. I get that he's terrible, but ruining a guys life over a fishing tournament seems a little extreme.

Hmm? I don't think I'd want to foist the $40,000 annual cost of incarcerating this guy for this sort of non-violent felony . . . on society. Too expensive. Let him keep working and support himself.

I'd start off by revoking his fishing license for some period of time, ban him from any tournament participation . . . at least 5 or 10 years. Then, I'd sentence him to time spent collecting trash around a lake (or lakes) near his home on Saturdays for, I don't know, maybe a year.

Brad

Not illegal to possess a fish that had been altered. It is illegal to do the altering. Now, the tournament may not accept it but you didn't break a law.

A felony seems a bit much. I get that he's terrible, but ruining a guys life over a fishing tournament seems a little extreme.

What if he actually caught it like that? It's improbable but not impossible. From the picture you can't really tell if it's freshly trimmed or not. It is a real bad trim job. They can get the Warden to testify as his opinion that it's freshly trimmed. Of course he could have caught it earlier, trimmed it, kept it and then weighed it.

They will probably plea this with him. It might be hard to get a conviction in a jury trial unless they have a confession or some evidence more than just the trimmed tail. It's a felony so it's going to be beyond a reasonable doubt. You can bet a half decent attorney won't let a tournament angler on the jury.

In Katy... maybe ill run into him.