Gillnet Kills Hundreds of Fish in My Local Creek (Rant/Video)

[Thoke2014]

I think the title tells it pretty well, but basically I was crappie/bass fishing at my uncle's farm where there is a fairly large creek. I came across a Gillnet, which is fairly common since they are legal in my state of Virginia, but this one had been left out for what I determined to be over a week and had snagged and killed hundreds of fish most of which being Shad, Bass, and Catfish. I was able to free some of the fish but the majority were dead and to make if worse the damn thing is still sitting in the water for all I know because the Game Warden never showed up and none of the bass fisherman wanted to help me drag the thing out . Have any of y'all ever seen anything like this because I assumed this was a pretty rare thing but my uncle said he has seen it a couple times before in the same creek. I had a GoPro on at the time and made a video so I though I would share it, warning though, I do use some rather strong language

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCH2u658GPM

[InstinctiveArcher]

Yup, I've seen them on occasion. We've got a lot of native americans around where I live and they are allowed to use them. Most do it responsibly, but others could care less about the damage that they do.

[marcthehunter]

Wow... I would be angry too. Reminds me of the Chinese that fish in the river not too far from where I live. The don't have any licenses, keep every fish they catch and go sell them to cheap sushi shops in the area. Our province cut a lot of game wardens in the last few years so few of them actually patrol. Don't think any of these guys ever got caught. Not that they would care, truth be told.

[caledonianblues]

Aren't humans wonderful? Depressing.

Anyway good job saving some of the fish!

[Thoke2014]

Wow... I would be angry too. Reminds me of the Chinese that fish in the river not too far from where I live. The don't have any licenses, keep every fish they catch and go sell them to cheap sushi shops in the area. Our province cut a lot of game wardens in the last few years so few of them actually patrol. Don't think any of these guys ever got caught. Not that they would care, truth be told.

Ya we have the illegal Chinese fisherman in my area too and no one ever does anything about them, I really hope this guy gets caught since each net has to have a tag with an identification number on it which I reported to the GW's office but I doubt they can really do anything to whoever this guy is . I think my area has cut game wardens too though, it took the guy 2+ hours to get into a relatively accessable creek that is 10 miles from their state headquarters..

[Cartoon Head]

It's not a US only thing too, here in the UK we have the Eastern Europeans (who are awesome for the most part) that leave lines out over night tied to trees and then collect and take the fish home next day, it would't really be an issue it's just that our coarse fish are not really the eating kind, we pretty much put back everyting we catch, only rarely would we take anything home to eat but the Eastern EU guys are eating our stocks.

They eat a lot of carp which I can only imagine tastes disgusting as it is a bottom feeder itself.

[Exanimis]

'for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."
Herman Melville, Moby shorty
shorty? Really? lol

[Exanimis]

They eat a lot of carp which I can only imagine tastes disgusting as it is a bottom feeder itself.

Carp recipe
1 large carp, gutted and scaled
4 lbs horse manure
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon oregano

Sprinkle horse manure with nutmeg, cinnamon and oregano and stuff the carp
Bake at 350 degrees for 3 hours and 30 minutes
Let cool for 1 hour
remove the stuffing
throw away the carp and eat the horse manure.

[Cartoon Head]

Lol, I thought you was being serious for a while there!!

I work with a Polish girl and they eat Carp for their Christmas lunch, they love it, weird.

[gas56]

That's disgusting alright...
But some people just don't care.

I've seen state ponds taken care of by the division of wildlife drained and watch tons of bass rot in the drying up mud beds.
Some locals came to stock their ponds with what buckets they could fill, but usually it was just too late to save very many.
For the most part tons of game fish were just left to rot away in the once big ponds and die.

What a loss of fish resources, but it happens more than you know.