By BEN RAINES
Staff Reporter
Three commercial gill nets being fished in Alabama waters by two Mississippi men were confiscated by the Alabama Marine Resources Division early Tuesday morning in Grand Bay after a stakeout operation.
The nets were confiscated the same day the Alabama House Agriculture committee approved a bill that seeks to ban commercial gill nets from state waters. That bill would allow recreational netters to continue using nets up to 300 feet long.
On Sunday morning, a 300-foot recreational net was confiscated on Dauphin Island after the man using it, Francis Crenshaw of Irvington, was caught cleaning 35 speckled trout on a west end beach, according to Marine Resources officials. Recreational gillnetters are not allowed to keep any speckled trout or redfish in Alabama.
The nets confiscated in Grand Bay were each 1,200 feet long, and worth more than $1,000 apiece. Both Mississippi men have commercial Alabama out-of-state gillnet licenses. One of the men fishing the nets, Billy Stork, has been caught violating gillnet laws several times before, according to Marine Resources officials, and now has six points against his license. Netters lose their license if they accumulate 10 points. The other fisherman, Larry Ryan Jr., had no prior points on his license.
Click here to read the full article from the Mobile Press-Register.
