If you didn’t catch my recent “Carp Slam V” recap, I described a pretty bizarre situation of running into a “gang” of rogue spear-netters on the South Platte River. Just the other day, I received the following e-mail (below). My take: rules are rules, and Denver South Platte street justice is well… justice.
Hey Will: Just wanted to let you know that I was on the Platte near Commerce City on Sunday and I came across what had to be the same spearnet gang you saw during the Slam. Had I not read your recap of the Slam I may not have taken the time to slow down and pay attention to what they were doing. When I saw the net, I called DOW and left a message.
An officer called me a few hours later and told me that he contacted the guys and issued some citations. He said they were not catching fish in the net itself, but using it as a barrier to stop fish from moving upstream as they chased them with the spears. In addition to carp and suckers, they had also speared some bass and a catfish. As “gamefish” cannot be speared, that was one of the citations issued. Hopefully we will not continue to see these illegal activities on the DSP.
More from the “Carp Slam V” recap:
We walked a half-mile stretch of river and didn’t see a single fish. I had caught my first mirror in this same section earlier this summer. We would regularly see packs of cruising fish in this skinny part of the river. I was starting to correlate the events in my head. Spear-net gang… fish are disappearing. I had just finished telling Tyler my “Welcome to the Thunderdome” experience as we were scanning for fish from a cement abutment when guess who comes walking up: spearnet gang dude, 9-foot spear and all.
We continued to fish and this guy’s buddies show up with the seine net. They literally started to unfurl the net and sharpen their spear blades on the cement as we sat and cast at fish. No joke. It was freaky. We decided to split. These guys were waiting with baited breath and I knew those same fish would be dead in less than an hour.
The DOW officers showed up about 25 minutes after we called. I’m not sure if these guys got busted or tickets but they certainly found out the rules and regulations of the river.
