Law and Order on the Delta : Special DFG Unit Helps Patrol Sloughs Looking for Poachers and Other Violators, but Sometimes Compassion Necessary

As the dog is the natural enemy of the cat, the snake of man, so were we of the fish patrol the natural enemies of the fishermen.

--JACK LONDON, “Tales of the Fish Patrol”

From the looks on the faces of the four men, confronted on a recent night by Department of Fish and Game wardens and caught red-handed with dozens of undersized striped bass, it seems little has changed since Jack London’s days as a commissioned warden around the turn of the century.

Fishermen still break the law, knowingly or otherwise, and those who get caught are usually quick to show their scorn for the law.

“There are too many regulations on everything,” one of the men said as he was being cited by Lt. Joe Gonzalez. “You should have the rules written on the (fishing) licenses. I can go out into the ocean and catch anything I want. There are no regulations out there!”

Gonzalez, who has seen and heard it all, continued writing while warden Robert Prosser gathered the fish, some only four inches long, as evidence. Only one of the men, all of Philippine ancestry, spoke English, and he was the one cited. He will have his day in court, and probably be fined a few hundred dollars.

Back in the truck, continuing down the dark and desolate road, Gonzalez said: “The man’s an engineer for the state. He builds bridges and he doesn’t know that a striper should be 18 inches (the legal limit)?”

*

The 1,100 miles of waterways winding through this region are jet-black at night, and the streets along the levees provide miles of access. It is easy to see why this maze of sloughs known as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, an agricultural mecca by day, is a poacher’s paradise.

With knowledge of the tides and seasonal runs of salmon and striped bass, fishermen can carry a small boat down to the water’s edge, spread a net or set a line across the slough and in a few hours haul in a load of fish, then slip out of sight.

Such operations have been going on in the Delta since London’s days, when “knives flashed at the beginning of trouble and men permitted themselves to be made prisoners only after a revolver was thrust in their faces.”

But now, with all Delta fisheries in serious decline for several reasons, a serious effort is being made to deter poachers from showing such blatant disregard for the law. The DFG is trying to use its regular wardens in conjunction with the relatively new Delta-Bay Enhanced Enforcement Project, or D-Beep, which was organized in 1992 and recently expanded to 10 wardens and a lieutenant.

An additional 10 wardens doesn’t sound like much, but then D-Beep is not an ordinary DFG unit: It has money with which to operate.

D-Beep is funded by the Department of Water Resources as part of a mitigation effort to offset fishery losses caused by water diversions that destroy eggs, larvae and young fish in the system. Steelhead runs, once prolific, are all but a thing of the past. Salmon runs are endangered or threatened. Spawning adult striped bass in the Delta, which in the 1960s numbered 3 million, have declined to a few hundred thousand.

The days of London’s sailing the bay chasing down Chinese junks and angry fishermen are a thing of the past in one respect:

D-Beep wardens have at their disposal shiny new boats capable of 50 m.p.h., with state-of-the-art electronics and engines that run silently at the touch of a button. They have telescopes with cameras to spot and document poachers from almost a mile away, and laser-enhanced night-vision equipment that enables them to see in the dark.

Said Prosser, somewhat colorfully: “Our deputy lieutenant, he’s just happier than a pig in boop that somebody’s got the money to buy these things to make our job easier.”

It will never be an easy job. The Delta is too big, and it’s like no other angling destination.

Fishermen from all walks of life come here every day. In the spring and summer when the daytime heat is unbearable, they come at night when the mosquitoes are equally unbearable, parking on the levees and clearing a path to the water’s edge.

For many, there is no such thing as catch and release, nor is there any sport. There is only the matter of catching some fish to feed the family.

*

On that same recent cold and windy night, Prosser and Gonzalez stopped to check out an old station wagon parked on the levee 15 feet above the slough. Inside were a husband and wife with two young children. One end of a string of heavy monofilament was tied to the car’s antenna, which was bent almost to the breaking point toward the water. The other end was about 35 feet out in the slough, attached to a rock. Three lighter lines with baited hooks were suspended from the heavier line and the hooks were in the water.

The line would be checked from time to time, any fish removed and the hooks baited and put back in place. It’s a method common among Southeast Asian fishermen and is legal, Prosser said, provided three or fewer hooks are used.

Prosser and Gonzalez climbed back into the truck and continued down the road. They stopped again and noted more anglers using the same method.

Farther down the road, the four previously mentioned fishermen were huddled at the foot of an embankment, using rods and reels, when Gonzalez and Prosser came up from behind. At first, the English-speaking man denied catching the fish stuffed in a small white bag nearby, some of them still flapping. He eventually acknowledged blame for the whole group. “It’s my fault for bringing them,” he said, pointing to the others, who seemed confused by the situation.

Driving on, the wardens noticed a man setting up a plastic tarpaulin under some trees for shelter. He had his young son with him. They were camping for the night, hoping to catch their dinner. “Hard times,” the man said, as Prosser and Gonzalez started to move on. They did not check for licenses. “Even we have a heart,” Prosser said.

When told by this reporter that he had never experienced anything to match this scene, Gonzalez said matter-of-factly: “This is just different out here. This is the Delta.”

*

Since its creation in 1992, the D-Beep unit has made more than 4,000 arrests, with a conviction rate of nearly 100%. Most of the violations were for fishing without a license or for possessing too many fish or fish under the legal size.

But D-Beep, while steadily increasing the compliance rate among everyday fishermen, seems also to have begun uncovering dozens of large-scale poaching operations in which fish by the hundreds were being netted or caught on set-lines and sold on the black market.

“Many people here are new immigrants and they’re not sophisticated, and other groups have a whole plan worked out where they may actually be fencing this stuff, and they’re just as complicated as any drug lord,” D-Beep warden Mark Lucero said.

The most innovative poachers to date, Lucero said, were dubbed the “50th Avenue Sturgeon Gang” because all its members lived on 50th Avenue in Sacramento. After six months’ surveillance with night scopes, D-Beep finally nabbed two of them in November 1993 on the lower Sacramento River off Sherman Island, near its confluence with the San Joaquin River.

At midnight, the suspects were spotted working with longlines on the water. They then moved upriver without using their lights for about two miles, and began loading the night’s catch into a van.

The team moved in and arrested So Van Nguyen and Tung Van Nguyen. Others believed to be involved could not be connected to the crime. Included in the catch was a 180-pound sturgeon as a well as smaller sturgeon and hundreds of striped bass. The van was modified with an electric winch and boxes with false bottoms to store the fish and gear. The longlines measured a total of 2,250 feet. The Nguyens pleaded guilty on March 1 and were fined $2,735 each. So Van Nguyen was sentenced to 30 days in jail, Tung Van Nguyen to 10 days in jail. Both had their fishing privileges revoked for three years, and their boat and equipment were confiscated by the state.

“The key thing is, our funding source basically allows us to do our job 24 hours a day,” Gonzalez said. “If we come upon a net case or set-line or longline, we have the capability to just go ahead and be on stakeout as long as it takes, where we might not have been able to before. With some of the restrictions and budgetary problems the state’s going through right now . . . that is affecting the regular wardens’ jobs. They don’t have that luxury to stay out there past eight hours.”

An even more recent case involving two gill-netters resulted in large fines and jail sentences. And one repeat offender, who had spent six months in jail, was believed to have fled the country after being caught a third time. Several boats have been seized and thousands of dollars worth of gear have been confiscated.

D-Beep members and the DFG admit they will never be able to put a stop to the poaching of fish in the Delta--Lucero says they probably catch only 3% of the violators--nor are they naive enough to believe that the fisheries will ever be the same as in Jack London’s day.

But London would be proud nonetheless, having written of his dealings with poachers:

“We menaced their lives . . . We confiscated illegal traps and nets, the materials of which had cost them considerable sums and the makings of which required weeks of labor. And when we captured them, they were brought into the courts of law, where heavy cash fines were collected from them. As a result, they hated us vindictively.”