Saturday, June 07, 2008
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
State conservation officers this week confiscated three gill nets in Gulf Shores' Little Lagoon, where the practice is banned, and charged two men with illegal fishing, authorities said.
Conservation enforcement officer Mark Phillips said Friday that the local Marine Resources office was tipped off about a gill netter plying Little Lagoon early Tuesday. When one officer spotted a truck belonging to the suspect parked along the estuary, others put their boat in and went searching for the fishermen at about 4 a.m.
"We eased the boat down to the west end and we saw the boat's spotlight," Phillip said.
Four people — three men and a woman — were aboard a 20-foot skiff tending to a 1,500-foot-long gill net, Phillips said. The officers made them haul in the net and pluck the fish — mostly croakers — from it before they were apprehended, Phillips said.
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