Please help....ban fishing guides from gifting their catch to their clients..........

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?

Fin Bender:

"Madfisher - The difference is that a guide gets financial compensation for gifting. Be it in the form of fees, or advertising photos, or indictment for repeat business. If Any fisherman other than a guide received that for gifting fish it'd be illegal and possibly a felony if the Lacy act is violated. Anyway, is gifting fish covered in Statute or Administrative code by agency rule? Thanks for you post."

I am not aware of "gifting fish" being specifically mentioned in statute or rule

The relevant state statutes provide:

29.011  Title to wild animals.  

(1)  The legal title to, and the custody and protection of, all wild animals within this state is vested in the state for the purposes of regulating the enjoyment, use, disposition, and conservation of these wild animals.

(2) The legal title to a wild animal or carcass, taken or reduced to possession in violation of this chapter, remains in the state.  The title to a wild animal or carcass, lawfully acquired, is subject to the condition that upon the violation of this chapter relating to the possession, use, giving, sale, barter or transportation of a wild animal or carcass by the owner, the ownership shall revert, as a result of the violation, to the state. 

"29.539  Sale of wild animals.  

(1) 

(a)  Except as otherwise expressly provided under this chapter, no person may sell, purchase, barter, or trade, or offer to sell, purchase, barter, or trade or have in possession or under control for the purpose of sale, barter, or trade any of the following:"

Gifting of legally taken fish is not prohibited by statute. After all, once a person as legally taken a fish into possession, legal title of that fish transfers from the state to that person. It becomes their property, subject to Wis. Stats, 29.011(2) reclaiming title for the state. A sale, barter, or trade of fish is illegal, but gifting is not.

Note that, while 29.011(2) specifically mentions title of wild animals returning to the state for violations relating to "the possession, use, giving, sale, barter or transportation" of wild animals, the giving away of wild animals, legally taken, is, in itself, NOT a violation. Rather, a  person runs afoul of other prohibitions when giving (or receiving gifted) animals. For example, if I am already at my possession limit and I accept a gift putting me over, I am in violation. If a guide gives away their legal daily bag limit, and then goes out on the same day and catches and keeps more of the same fish that are part of that daily bag, they are in violation.

Whether the transfer of fish from a guide to a customer is a gift or a sale is a question of fact, under state law as well as under the Lacy Act, which itself also has prohibitions pertaining to sales, but not gifts. Three things to bear in mind: (1) A gift is not a sale, (2) Merely calling a transfer of property a gift does not make it a gift when in fact, it was a sale, and (3) Not all consideration or compensation resulting from a transfer of "gifted" property necessarily results in the transfer being a sale and not a gift. 

I understand that gifting fish in the context of the parties also having a business-customer relationship muddies up the "gift" part. But, I do beleive that, to prohibit gifting of fish by guides, a law change will be needed, and that answers your question as to how the "loop-hole" is to be closed.

BTW, I liked it when you said the guide receives, as financial consideration for the fish, an "...indictment for repeat business."  Ha!

WHY are the guides fishing in the first place. they dont do that on charters. Are they catching the fish that their clients are supposed to catch. I always thought the guide wasnt supposed to do that , just guide and let them catch the fish. When I guide people, I dont fish myself, Im too busy  landing and taking fish off the hook.  Maybe the people they are guiding are condoning this. Hey yeah. if I go out with the guide maybe I will get double limit.  Dont blame it on the guides only, MAYBE it is the clients fault too. On the assumption of your original post that seems to mean that the clients are accepting those fish ,so it would be their fault too. imohop.  Stop the Greedy clients

Happens on bago all the time. You wonder why the eye population in down. 

In my mind, it without a doubt violates the spirit of the law. You can possess 2x the daily limit. This is to keep people from taking limits day-after-day.

If I catch my limit every day. And every single day I give those fish to a different friend. No one is over the possession limit and no one is breaking the law. But I definitely violated the spirit of the law.

It's up to all of us, as people who love fishing, to follow the spirit of the law.

It's important to ask ourselves "if everyone behaved this way, would it be a problem?". If the answer is yes - then don't do it. 

That being said, my gut is that this is not a huge problem inthe grand scale of things. I see much more egregious violations all the time.

no one is saying they don't want to preserve or protect the resource, what isn't clear is if this is a REAL issue... no actual proof has been given.

Why wouldnt sportsmen want to conserve the resource more? Guides have different regulations than regular fishermen when they are with their client, so I don't see why this would be any different

Some commenter says he sees the same guys. Out catching and taking fish everyday. He does not say whether or not they are locals or guides. But yet wants to save the resource by imposing more regulations on guides. There is your sign folks. Watch your own bobber.

I'm sorry but i think there are bigger issues than this.How many walleyes and muskie are taken/killed by the Tribes that we don't know about?I believe there are more taken illegally by so called licensed sportsmen than the guides are gifting.I don't think they and their customers are limiting everyday and twice alot of those days.The guides know this is their income they won't crap where they sleep.If you can't catch your limit everyday don't blame the guides,hire them.

The wardens don't have the time or resources to cover everything in Vilas County.  They have them wasting time policing the campgrounds for crying out loud.  I also know a couple of the small time guides...the old timers.  They can put guys on walleyes everytime.  I can tell you, no matter how many are kept, they can keep catching them.  They take care of their customers.

It's interesting how people perceive how good/bad the walleye population is.  

Many of you have no clue what goes on.  

Madfisher - The difference is that a guide gets financial compensation for gifting. Be it in the form of fees, or advertising photos, or indictment for repeat business. If Any fisherman other than a guide received that for gifting fish it'd be illegal and possibly a felony if the Lacy act is violated. Anyway, is gifting fish covered in Statute or Administrative code by agency rule? Thanks for you post.

"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?"

It seems to me that, if the problem, as you see it,  is over harvesting of walleye, you reduce the bag/possession limits for everyone. Guides are still "fisherman," buy fishing licenses, and have the same fishing rights as any other "fisherman." ANY licensed fisherman can go out fishing most every day, catch a limit (or less), and gift those fish away to anyone they choose and never go over their legal possession limit. 

As far as closing the "loop-hole," write to your legislator, he or she is the one with the power to change the state statutes regarding bag/possession limits as well as adding a provison prohibiting fishing guides (or any fisherman for that matter ) from gifting fish.

read?

"The people I see on the same small lake taking their limit on a daily basis are the ones that need to change.  They are over their possession limit and way over their ethical limit"

yup

one more time... IF this is such a problem I find it hard to believe it hasn't been noticed by the DNR... since there's a lot of assumptions here, I'll assume that local wardens are familiar with guides in their area, and with their usual practices... at least as well as the OP says he is 

Guide "gifting" is illegal in North Dakota. No big deal. Makes total sense... 

Hard to believe so many find the idea of making guide gifting illegal so objectionable. Fish resources are under enough pressure as it is. If getting a limit of the guides fish is that important, you're a fish hog and hiring him for the wrong reason.

Fortunately, guides I've associated with do not condone this practice.

I like to eat fresh walleye, maybe they do too

Finbender find it funny that they fish 365 witch is every day and limits 365 days wow thats hard to believe