To Catch A Thief : Poachers mow down elk with AK-47s and run over deer with trucks. And an understaffed and outgunned state Department of Fish and Game can’t slow the slaughter.

A poacher’s image remains locked in feudal romance: a rascal with a rabbit in a sack, a peasant triumphant over gamekeepers and starvation.

Robin Hood was a poacher, and Davy Crockett killed 105 bears in seven months. Yet those ways are no longer a matter for warm lore.

Modern poachers mow down elk, including their calves, with AK-47 assault rifles. Or run over wounded deer when bullets run out. They harvest organs and paws from bears and leave the carcasses to rot.

They bring to this war forged permits, spotlights, diving gear to take lobster and abalone from protected areas, off-road vehicles, police radio scanners, infrared spotting scopes, military weapons, illegal lines that fish a mile of ocean with a single set and platinum credit cards.

Meanwhile, an understaffed, underfinanced and outgunned California Department of Fish and Game is powerless to decrease poaching, let alone contain it.

And its thin green line of wardens lives with one brutal statistic: Ninety-five percent of all poachers get away.

Gordon Cribbs, 23 years a wildlife protector and now a regional patrol chief with the department, knows why: “Fifty-five percent of our personnel in Southern California has less than three years’ experience.”

His gripe list includes two dozen fewer enforcement positions than three years ago, no budget for overtime, some money to repair aging boats and vehicles--but no money for new equipment.

“That leaves us with a highly dedicated troop of personnel working like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike,” Cribbs says. “But we’re running out of fingers.”

Last year, the 265 wardens in California’s five Fish and Game regions made 400,000 contacts and wrote 30,000 warnings and citations for a variety of offenses, including poaching.

And as economies weaken and more jobs are lost, poaching becomes a wider, easier route to free groceries.

Worries Cribbs: “If only between 2% and 5% of all (poaching) violations are detected, you have to wonder what’s really going on out there.”

*

There is a spy with big binoculars, they say, who dogs every Fish and Game patrol boat slipping from San Diego Bay.

He is a retired Portuguese fisherman who believes in an Old Country code. It says a man who faces cruelties at sea--fingers lost to snapping lines--and leaky boats eking small profits from emptying oceans, shouldn’t also have to put up with fish cops.

So on this morning, as the 47-foot patrol boat Tuna leaves Shelter Island, its skipper knows that, from a house high above Point Loma, an old man is watching.

“He’ll get on his marine radio and tell boats in the area that Fish and Game is coming out,” says Lt. Mike Castleton, who once worked sport boats from Fisherman’s Landing and knows every mover and mood of these waters. “But it doesn’t matter what he tells them. We’re not after his people today.”

There is nothing in the boat’s departure to indicate precisely what Castleton and crew might be after today. It could be a quick snatch of someone commercially fishing illegal species, such as ray or sea bass. Or a move on gill netters. Or a stakeout against sport divers raiding commercial lobster traps.

But Castleton, 45, is after long liners.

His case has been building for months. Some stops have already been made and citations issued. A pattern is forming.

Castleton’s sources have identified a group of seven small boats. All have commercial permits to farm the three miles of California’s Pacific waters, and their 16-foot runabouts regularly return to San Diego with 400-pound loads of white croaker.

Seven boats. Six or seven days a week. That’s more than 14 tons of fish each week, a staggering amount by legal means.

Problem is, Castleton says, this gang isn’t fishing straight.

The law demands set lines--vertical lines anchored to the ocean floor. Hooks are limited to the lower third of the line. That allows only bottom fishing, keeps lines to about 200 feet and effectively restricts the catch. It also preserves the ocean’s upper depths as a natural haven for the fish.

But poachers are working with horizontal lines drifting behind their boats for more than 3,000 feet. One line may be armed with more than 2,000 hooks. The lines are weighted but not anchored--and that is long lining.

“These people are tapping into an area that isn’t usually fished, from just below the surface to just above the bottom, and they are going for all species,” Castleton says. “If they were fishing legally, their daily catches would be greatly reduced and the oceans would be that much richer.”

Most of these fishermen, wardens say, are natives of Vietnam who faced no restrictions on take or methods when they worked the South China Sea.

But Castleton must look beyond cultural heritage to California law.

And as other detectives follow money to find the laundry, he has followed fish to shore-based connections and an odd form of organized crime: a poaching syndicate.

Castleton suspects that it is headed by a Vietnamese businessman who owns markets, recruits fishermen and buys everything they catch. He then sells to Vietnamese restaurants in the San Diego-National City area.

“It’s a real slow process, but we’re piecing it all together,” Castleton says. “Maybe we’ll get something on this guy, maybe we won’t. Because he’s not the one doing the fishing. But if we can shut down the gear, we’ll be shutting down the whole thing.”

On this particular morning, there would be gear to shut down because Tim Olivas, 30, a warden aboard the Tuna, has been doing some spying of his own.

Walking boat ramps before dawn, he noticed three trailers that indicated some folk already were out.

Just after 6 a.m., Castleton steers the Tuna to a cluster of mooring buoys about three miles offshore. The buoys surround a floating platform that headquarters an extension of a San Diego sewer outlet.

The patrol boat’s radar sweeps the area. Nothing. Just rusting buoys and the untidy island of the pipeline platform.

Binoculars and the eyes of Castleton, Olivas and Warden Janette Gunther, 28, assist the electronic scanning. Still nothing. Just a dead log, kelp banks and floats above commercial lobster traps.

Castleton turns the boat to sniff a little closer to Mexico. Black coffee and doughnuts are below. There’s shoptalk. The officers agree that wildlife protection beats city police work with its drug dealers and suspects who vomit on your shoes.

Castleton decides to retrace his steps and his thinking.

Maybe on that first pass the suspected poachers ducked behind the buoys and the platform where radar could not pinpoint them.

As the Tuna closes on the platform, Castleton gets his answer.

A runabout breaks from its shadow, rooster tail spurting, and heads for San Diego at full throttle. Castleton does not give chase. To make a case for long lining, a poacher must be caught with tackle in the water.

No matter. Two more runabouts appear between the buoys. One is getting underway, the other still has a line in the water.

Castleton closes in, and Gunther hops aboard the second boat before Xe Van Pham, 56, and his son Ty, 23, can recover their long line with its hooks and full load of white croaker.

Gunther--one of only 50 female California game wardens--finds no anchor on the line, just two light weights.

With Gunther on-board as armed escort, boat and occupants are ordered to the Harbor Police dock at Shelter Island.

Xe Van Pham, looking decades tired and barely able to speak English, says he is a full-time fisherman. His son says he is a San Diego State biochemistry student. Neither seems particularly troubled. This official intervention is nothing compared to the pirates and Vietnamese gunboats they risked when they fled Da Nang for Hong Kong in 1983.

They identify the market where they had hoped to sell their catch for about 60 cents a pound. Castleton smiles.

A citation for long lining is issued; the penalty could be a $1,000 fine and/or six months in jail.

Castleton explains that the fish will be sold and the money held in a check to the agency’s Wildlife Preservation Fund.

“If you win in court, you get the money,” Castleton tells the fishermen.

“I don’t think we are going to win,” Ty Van Pham says.

The fishing line eventually measures 6,350 feet--3,350 feet over the limit--and it carries 2,540 hooks.

The Van Phams’ catch tallies out to 530 pounds and sells for $371.

Ironically, Castleton sells the fish to the first and easiest outlet--the businessman he believes is supervising the poachers.

“They still make out, don’t they?” he says.

*

They are horrible sunglasses with yellow plastic frames and wraparound, polychromatic, Star Trek lenses.

“Even my mother wouldn’t recognize me in these,” says Marty Wall, 35, with a laugh.

Jon Willcox, 30, is behind a great mustache that makes a whiskery merger with a three-day stubble that is just a little scratchier than his brown sweater.

John Sutton, 30, has chosen the juvenescent look: crew cut, close shave, pink cheeks and a down jacket straight from a Lands’ End catalogue.

Thirty minutes before dawn, everyone is talking trout and stripers over coffee and Egg McMuffins in a McDonald’s alongside dueling truck stops on Interstate 5 south of Pyramid Lake. Three buddies, obviously on a day off.

What is underneath Wall’s checked shirt, however, isn’t quite so recreational: a Glock semiautomatic pistol.

Willcox carries a Smith & Wesson snub-nose because the last time he wore his favored 9-millimeter Beretta, a suspect made the bulge. Hidden in boyish Sutton’s shirt pocket is a silver star of law enforcement, which gives him authority to carry a concealed Glock.

This definitely is a workday for Wall, Willcox and Sutton--wardens with the Department of Fish and Game and plainclothes partners in a recent undercover operation against illegal fishing in Pyramid.

It should be a busy shift.

In two hours, the lake will be planted with up to 1,000 pounds of pan-sized trout from the department’s hatchery at Fillmore.

The drop is supposed to be classified, but there is a mole inside Fish and Game. Somebody has been leaking times and dates, and each planting is greeted by a small flotilla of fishermen.

Some trout--fed by man since fingerlings and naive to the ways of open water--are hooked within seconds of leaving the tanker. Next stop, a buttered skillet. Borderline sport, but perfectly legal.

Some of the fish, however, are caught and used as live bait for big striped bass. The practice eases the task of hooking bass, which consider live trout to be M & Ms wrapped in marshmallow. It also wastes trout and is thoroughly illegal.

So, briefs Willcox, let’s not burn the team by writing citations for minor offenses--fishing without a license or going over the limit of five fish per angler. Let uniformed lake deputies worry about those.

The undercover team will go after unsportsmen who cast live bait or who fish Polynesian style with throw nets.

Willcox says the former are easy to spot: “A bass pole is much heavier than a trout pole. If you see a trout at the end of a broomstick, you’ve got a guy using live bait.”

At first light, the team--trailering an 18-foot Fisher skiff with phony registration behind an unmarked, creaky, Dijon-yellow pickup--drives to Pyramid Lake.

Willcox and Sutton will fish among the shore casters, sharing tips, lures and conversations among new friends.

Wall opts for the boat despite ice-pick winds, crabbing casually toward a small boat tucked in a cove.

The warden thinks out loud as he fishes: “He’s so relaxed over there, he’s not casting. He’s got to have a big bait of some kind.

“It’s a real heavy line. That could also mean live bait. ‘Course, there’s always a chance he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Let’s watch him for a while and see if that bait starts to swim.”

It doesn’t. The fisherman finally reels in.

“It’s not big and silver,” Wall says. “It’s small and brown. He’s probably got some crawdads as bait. So I think we can leave him alone.”

At 8:30, a hatchery tanker reverses down the boat ramp. Trout are planted. Boats ring the ramp like paparazzi .

But among the shore fisherman are people interested in more than trout to go. Willcox and Sutton spot one man who hooks two trout and slips them into a five-gallon drum.

They follow as he moves away from the ramp and to an inlet behind a parking lot. He starts to fish, alone and unwatched.

Willcox signals Wall, who has docked the skiff to stretch his legs, and says they have hooked a suspect. Willcox says to be careful the man doesn’t dump the evidence. The tip of a lighted cigarette will burn through a nylon line in a millisecond. There goes the evidence and the case.

Fishing pole in hand, Wall approaches the suspect.

“Catch anything?”

“Nah.”

“What you using for bait?”

“Anchovy.”

Wall lifts his shirt, shows his badge and the holstered Glock, and says he’s going to reel in the line and does anyone mind?

“No. Anchovy, like I say.”

“Gee, it sure feels like you got a fish on this line.”

“Just anchovy.”

Wall reels in. The anchovy is a trout. It is alive and hooked through and through, just behind the belly.

Wall informs Arthur Petrosyan, 39, a Los Angeles trucker, that he will be cited for unauthorized use of trout as bait. Wall says he doesn’t know the amount of the fine and doesn’t tell Petrosyan it could be as high as $500.

“Hey, a guy just told me about it. This the first time (and) I’m getting a ticket. Five minutes ago this guy he gave me the trout and said it OK. I swear to God. I didn’t know anything about it,” Petrosyan says.

Wall says he’d like to believe him. He’d like to believe everyone.

*

Oxnard Airport is at its loneliest just before midnight. American Eagle’s last flight is an echo bound for Los Angeles. A dark control tower stares at black runways roughened by a wet wind from the Channel Islands.

Reed Smith walks with authority through a ramp gate marked for authorized entry only.

In a blue jacket, jeans and sneakers, he doesn’t look much like a lieutenant with the state Department of Fish and Game. No gun, and the 20-year veteran isn’t even sure where he put his badge.

Tall, wiry, gray and 48, Smith has volunteered to work tonight. By day, he coordinates official response to pollution threats. But when you’ve studied law and been a sheriff’s deputy, there’s something about chasing bad guys that becomes a habit.

So he stays in touch with the field by flying occasional missions against poachers who hunt at night, hypnotizing deer by KC light bars or hand-held spotlights. Their weapons of choice range from bows and arrows to sawed-off shotguns. Some poachers have been armed with AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifles.

Soon, a twin-engined Cessna rolls in from the south. Warden Jeff Veal, 27, from the department’s Long Beach air division, is at the controls.

These Spotlight Patrols are relatively simple missions, usually flown in the fall when deer are big, well-fed and ripe for poaching.

Wardens, maybe eight or more, penetrate a designated area in four-wheel-drive vehicles. A department airplane loiters overhead, looking not just for vehicle headlights but for spotlights splashing the timbers.

With contact, the airplane overflies the suspect vehicle and pinpoints its location. Coordinates are radioed to the ground. Then the airplane moves wardens toward suspects like checkers on a board.

Some nights are a feast, with eight or more busts; on others, government gets the goose egg. Each side knows well all the moves and that victory goes to the craftiest.

Poachers now probe for game with amber or red spotlights that are less visible from the air. To reduce official presence, department patrol planes douse cabin lights and anti-collision strobes.

The bad guys carry VHF scanners to monitor communication between airplane and ground patrols. The good guys use a computer mated to the airplane’s Loran navigation system, rendering their directional references as gibberish to anyone outside the loop.

Smith checks the computer and its programs with Veal. There is only a light briefing between lieutenant and warden; the team has been here a dozen times before.

Veal is pilot first, warden second. Before joining Fish and Game, he flew for Federal Express. Should an airline wave, he’ll be gone.

Smith is an environmental lifer who seems low-key because he accepts the limitations and realities of his career. He knows he’s a cork in a dam. But that doesn’t stop him from being the tightest damned cork there is.

He doesn’t hate poachers. Their crimes are not close to murder or arson. But he also knows that just a few can gouge much from a state’s resources, and then it wouldn’t be long before California is empty of wildlife.

Veal inches the throttles forward, the Skymaster waddles and rumbles, then leaps into the dark. He turns northeast toward the eastern flank of Los Padres National Forest. Mt. Pinos is ahead. The airplane will straddle Thorn Meadows, Reyes Creek and Lockwood and Hungry valleys.

There are a dozen lights below. Dirt bikers. Campers in pickups. The more daring in off-road vehicles jousting along dirt roads in the black. And a dozen camp fires.

But no spotlights. Every vehicle seems on a deliberate course, not sniffing or circling back.

Two hours into the mission, the cabin is over-warm. Smith dumps his jacket, then sweat shirt. Veal passes out Gummy Bears and wonders if the division’s budget will ever stretch to a stewardess.

Despite the hour and the closeness, eyes remain open and screwed into binoculars scanning the ground.

Veal and Smith swap war stories.

Remember the guy who got away, the poacher who dumped his spotlight and weapon before being stopped? He told wardens he was trying to find a back road to Bakersfield.

Hear the one about the decoy deer left on a trail and the poacher who hit it with every shot from a .357 magnum before realizing his kill was stuffed?

The night drags. Muscles stiffen in the cramped airplane. A flask of coffee is opened, but there are no takers.

Veal reports to a ground unit and says there’s nothing to see from up here. Ground-pounding Warden Ernie Acosta radios back and says there’s no action down there.

At 1:30 a.m., they call it a morning.

Veal is sure poachers heard the plane and knew another patrol was aloft. Like all good animals, they almost certainly went to ground until danger passed: “Right about now, there are probably 50 poachers going back out.”

Smith can’t remember how long it has been since a Spotlight Patrol has been skunked, “but it goes with the territory.”

In any case, there are many other satisfactions to his work.

He can see and visit patches of wetlands rich in trees and vegetation . . . streams unspoiled by multiple crossings . . . a fish passage cut into a dam and a wildlife corridor made part of a flood-control channel.

“I can point and say: ‘Hey, that’s there because I took some action and wrote the regulations some years ago,’ ” Smith explains. “Having helped preserve the habitat, I’ve helped preserve the wildlife. That does it for me.”