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Daily FishFeed News:October 27th 2009 2:25 pm
| Fishing Charges Against Restaurateur
SFGATE.COM - What could be one of the more outrageous fish crimes in Bay Area history - the alleged gillnetting of white sea bass for sale in a restaurant - is going to trial in Marin County after game wardens reportedly caught a man with fish slime on his hands and three 25-pounders at his feet.
An anonymous tipster to the Department of Fish and Game reported that John Konatich, owner of Tony's Seafood restaurant on the shore of Tomales Bay in Marshall, was gillnetting sport fish at night for his restaurant, game warden Rich Mead said.
Tony's was contacted by phone for this column, but an employee said Konatich was not available.
"He sets up lights on the dock behind his restaurant to attract baitfish," the caller said, according to Mead. "Then when white sea bass and striped bass come in to feed, he'd set a gill net."
Mead said, "Every day I go out on patrol and I run across things that never cease to amaze me. When we got this call, I wondered, 'How long has that guy been doing that?' "
Mead, working undercover with another officer, Joseph Laugesen, also in plain clothes, visited Tony's Seafood on a weekday afternoon in August when the restaurant was closed. They quietly searched the property, and at the end of the dock, said they found a large commercial fish barrel - and inside was a gill net.
They returned to Tony's Seafood after working a spotlighting deer poaching case late on a Saturday night and arrived at 1 a.m.
"We saw an individual at the end of the dock," Mead said. "He was standing next to a roll cart, and on the cart he had three large white sea bass." When the game wardens approached, they also said they spotted wet waders and gloves covered with fresh fish scales on the dock.
"Where did you get the fish?" Mead said he asked the man.
"I caught them with my fishing rod," was the answer, said Mead, who identified the man as Konatich.
"Look, it's 1 o'clock Sunday morning," Mead said he told Konatich. "We didn't just show up here by chance."
Mead said Konatich then admitted using the gill net and showed him the three sea bass. Wardens said they found three more large sea bass in the restaurant's cold storage unit that had been caught that night and more filleted sea bass in a nearby walk-in freezer, along with a juvenile halibut and a 4 1/2-foot leopard shark. Konatich said he had caught the shark in April in the gill net, according to Mead.
Fish and Game seized the illegal catch and a wet gill net that was 400 feet long and 16 feet deep with 5-inch mesh, lead weights on the bottom and floats on top. Mead said the floats allowed the suspect to vacuum 16 feet of water, from surface to bottom, leaving no way for the fish to escape.
The sea bass was turned into filets the morning after it was confiscated, and Fish and Game donated it to charity.
Kathryn Mitchell off the Marin County district attorney's office said that Konatich was charged last week with eight counts of violations of the Fish and Game Code, all misdemeanors. The counts include the unlawful use of a gill net; unlawful taking of a bird, mammal, fish or reptile; possession of a creature unlawfully taken and failing to keep accounting records.
In Superior Court, Konatich pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. He is scheduled to appear again Nov. 10.
"Tomales Bay is famous for salmon, halibut, and people spend their hard-earned money for a chance to catch a fish," Mead said. "Yet here's a guy setting a 400-foot gill net, catching everything. It's disturbing."
Illegal fish and wildlife activity can be reported to Fish and Game's poacher hot line at (888) 334-2258 or its Bay Area office at (707) 944-5500.
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