Guides in Wisconsin fish nearly every day. They have the ability to catch many, many fish; and they do. This is not a concern in itself. What is a great concern is the legal practice of guides who gift their catch to clients.
For those who don't know about this here is how it works: a client hires a guide to take him fishing. On most bodies of water without special regulations that client can catch 3 walleye in one day, so far so good. The guide can also catch his 3 walleye. Six total walleye in the boat. Here is where it gets ugly. That guide can drive back to landing and "gift" his catch to the client. The client then goes home with six fish, even though his daily limit is 3. To top it off, they can drive to another lake and repeat this same practice for 4 more walleye (2 each) and send the client home with 10 walleye.
As you can see this practice is of concern. It's nearly impossible to enforce, meaning it's very easy for the guide to simply allow his client to catch all the fish, which is not legal. Also because of how often guides fish there is a concern that this is an abuse of the resource. If the guide was simply fishing for himself he would not be able to keep that many fish day after day because he would exceed his possession limit. This practice allows the keeping of many more fish than what was intended by current law.
What I don’t know is how this loop-hole in the law can be closed. Walleye in Wisconsin are on the decline and this is adding to the problem. How can this be stopped?
