Ophiuchi;3390362; said:
There is no law about "game fish" specifically. The only pertinent law is on page 23 of the 2009 DFG Sportfishing Regs:
"1.63. Movement of Live Fish. Except as provided in Sections 4.00 through 4.30 and 230, live fin fish may not be transported alive from the water where taken."
The main reason for this law is to keep people from releasing fish, back into the ocean, after they have kept them in a home aquarium. The big fear is that someone will put a native fish in an aquarium where it might catch a non-native disease or parasite (from store bought fish food or fish, or water from the fish store, etc). Then, when it's time to shut down the tank, or if the native fish isn't doing well, most people would just take their "pets" down to the ocean and set them free again. The infected fish could easily infect the native population, which would have no immunity to the non-native disease, and the wild population could be devastated.
I don't keep native fish (because of the law above), but I legally keep So Cal octopus and other invertebrates, and I have a strict one-way-trip policy for anything I put in my tank.
They're not trying to protect the one fish you catch (which you can kill and eat anyway) they are trying to protect the whole population of fish. I think the idea behind the law is really good, so if you choose to break it, be sure to never release anything, even if it means you have to kill what you caught. One-way-trip.
