2007 seems to be my year for witnessing blatant violations of fishing regulations…
In early May, I was fishing Lake Macbride here in southeast Iowa. I was trolling over some structure and having decent success for walleye and crappie, as were the other boats working the same line. One of them, with a single older guy on board, had three lines out. (Iowa regulations allow two lines per angler.) After passing close enough to see for sure that all three lines had baits on them, I asked the angler running three lines if he had a midget on board. He asked what I meant (he had earlier asked me how the fishing was before he started fishing); I said there must be another person on-board whom I couldn’t see, since he was running more than two lines. He muttered something I couldn’t catch, but did pull one of his lines in and kept it out thereafter.
At the beginning of June, I was up at Lake Osakis in central Minnesota. One night, after a good day of fishing, I walked out on the dock at the resort to see how the people fishing there were doing. While I was there a kid reeled in a 14″ walleye. There is a 15″ minimum for walleye on Osakis, so the kid did the right thing and went to release his sub-legal fish. A middle-aged guy fishing there told the kid to run up to the fish house and clean the 14″ fish. The kid ignored him and released the fish. Soon after, the CO pulled up to the dock in his boat at 11:00 PM, and asked to look in the middle-aged guy’s fish basket. There was a 14.5″ walleye there, which cost the guy $105. 
I am guessing that wasn’t a random check by the CO.
This past weekend, I was trout-fishing Gribben Creek back home in Fillmore County, Minnesota. As I waded up-stream, I came to a wide pool near a parking spot on the creek. There I found a man, woman, and three kids fishing with fat, juicy nightcrawlers on the ends of their lines. I asked them how the fishing was, and what they were using for bait. These people glared at me and said nothing, which told me everything I needed to know. Live bait of any sort is not allowed on Gribben Creek, and this family knew they were breaking the law. They were pretty surly, so I made it a point to reach in to my waders after I passed them and pretend to talk in to a cell phone (it was actually my small trout tackle box). I heard them pack up and leave.
What ties these three examples together is that all three involved people who knew they were breaking the law, and didn’t seem to care a whit. I am the last person in North America who has never owned a cell phone. This is in part due to economic reasons, and partly due to the fact that I would hate being tied to the cell phone leash that allows people to reel you in no matter where you are. However, if I keep seeing blatant poaching like I have seen this year, I may have to get a cheap cell phone plan after all, just to call the local COs.
Good going. 
