Florida Fish and Game set me with a fine for selling fish without a license! Unfair?

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Bummer days dude. Good luck in Court. Gadda tell ya though. What yer doin ain't right. Bad idea releasing fish to the wild after having them in your tank. You could be spreading all kinds things that way.
I mean Dude! Haven't you read the #1 sticky for this forum
 
Giving. selling, trading possession, is all the same to the law.

I'm sure they stacked the charges so at least one of them you'll be able to plee-bargain to, and they'll drop the rest.

Where you are going to run into problems, is probably "how" you collected them, Possession "not of legal size", and transporting "not of legal size".

Game fish are worse than commercial fish, and that is what most commercial fisherman are charged with.

The catch is, they fine by the piece confiscated, so you might just get off with a small fine and probation. Hopefully there will be no Jail time.

But DO get an attorney, that would be your best investment at this point...;)
 
fhawk362;3586278; said:
I was selling fish on craigslist, trying to help people start tanks like the rest of us, well I come to find out that I need a license to do so. Florida fish and game set a sting operation on me and now i have a court date wednesday. I did not mean any harm, if I had known it was wrong I would not have even attempted. I tried to correct the problem, I'm not into selling the fish too much, more so keeping them, but I would like to help others get the love from these fish I have. So I called Florida Fish and game to see what it would take for me to be able to sell fish to help others in the hobby. They say I need a freshwater fish dealers license, great. So I ask what that covers me to do. After talking to 7 people on the matter and getting no information I decide to just email them. 2 weeks later they write me back. The dealers license only covers the selling of fish that are not game fish. Which game fish goes from Bass to bream, pretty much every fish. So now I'm going to be fined for selling fish without a license when there is no license to even allow selling gamefish which is what all of my fish were considered. So although I feel bad I also feel like Florida fish and game is in no way set up to control the selling of fish and that it seems unfair to make it practically impossible because it is so limited and I would have been in the wrong no matter how licensed I was. Any thoughts on the matter. If you feel like I was strongly in the wrong go ahead and tell me, I can take it. I just want some opinions from fellow hobbyists.
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My thoughts its free game for exotics that you catch- thats my opinion and shouldn't have any license but I'm not the government. I follow whatever fishing laws in that state I am fishing in.

However you get slapped with whatever fines you get as its the price you pay for trying to make a quick buck when theres thousands and thousands of people doing it the legal way. I'm not going to give you some sympathy points on that at all plus releasing things back in the wild regardless of the size is a big stupid move on your part according to your sig.

Did you report your earnings to the IRS by the way from catching what you caught and sold it off to people because that wasn't really your "personal" property to start with since you wanted to make a business out of it if you were really "promoting" the hobby you would have been educating responsible fish keeping ethics and to keep big fish regardless of their sizes in a mere 55g and releasing less than 3 inches in the wild and giving away the fish instead of selling them? Those people who do it the legal way do this- they cough up their hard-earned earnings in taxes did you do that as well? Fishermen, crabbers, whatnot that makes living off the land report their earnings and taxes. In return the tax dollars go back into the land resources programs.

Maybe this issue is just rubbing me off the wrong way as I'm doing my taxes right now. We're all guilty at one point or another for keeping natives and then later on decide we don't want it and end up trading it away or selling it but not as a business. Maybe one or two time thing.
 
JimL;3586986; said:
Bummer days dude. Good luck in Court. Gadda tell ya though. What yer doin ain't right. Bad idea releasing fish to the wild after having them in your tank. You could be spreading all kinds things that way.
I mean Dude! Haven't you read the #1 sticky for this forum
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I must agree with JimL's response. Bad idea releasing the fish back into the wild. I don't know all the Fish & Game Laws or Rules, but IMHO these people (the Departments of Fish & Game, everywhere), run the biggest "fish tanks" anywhere. They have their rules because, even though the waters and fisheries they are entrusted to oversee are for the public, they don't like for people to be messing them up.

So having said that, I am obviously playing the Devil's Advocate here. But to be sure I convey this right,let me say this.

"If it were your aquarium at home, you probably wouldn't like it much if someone came and took the fry out without your permission. I would guess that you would like it even less, if after they could not sell YOUR fish, they brought them back and tossed them back in your tank (along with an infestation of ich or whatever else they had in their holding tank)".

Enough said.

I wish you the best of luck on your court date, and hope you let us all know how it goes for you.

MMG
 
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