# A Chain Bridge DC Fishing (and Police) Story



## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

So... Sunday, April 13th, 2014, I go down to the Potomac River under the Chain Bridge DC to do some fishing. Directly under the Bridge there are about a half dozen folks gathered and they are tossing two big nets into the River. They seem to be speaking in Vietnamese and without any racism intended a few of them also look to be Vietnamese. Every net pull hauls in a half-dozen or a full dozen fish - Shad, River Herring, etc. They are loading the fish into big plastic garbage or shopping bags and some of them are running the fish back to the parking lot (I deduce) to stow them away.

I arrived at 5:00 PM and this was already underway. By 05:30 PM I call 911 and get hold of the DC Police and then the Park Police. I report what is going on.... but no one shows. I call the Police back constantly for the next 3 hours but they lie to me, say they already checked it out and nothing was going on, etc. I call them liars and demand they send a car down. Finally at 9:00 PM I head back to Silver Spring, MD and call them one more time. Now the Cop manning the phone tells me his Supervisor will go down but I have to be there to meet him. So.. I say... G-d Damned it! I will drive back to DC and be back at the parking lot at the Chain Bridge, DC side by 09:30 PM. I go back and the Police are indeed there. I walk to the middle of the Chain Bridge and look down to see if the net fisherman are still there but I see nothing going on under the Bridge at this point. I don' think they caught anyone as far as I know.

Monday and Tuesday (today) I speak to DC Dept of Environment ("DDOE") and to Maryland DNR AND.... to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service Enforcement in Richmond, VA. Apparently Maryland DNR and U.S. Fish and Wildlife call up DC not long after I speak to them. And maybe a little trouble starts for the Park Police who did nothing to stop the poaching. There is some kind of agreement to step up policing there and to run DC Police Boats on the River up under the Chain Bridge.

I wish I had the pleasure of seeing them round up that crew that was poaching all the fish. That would have made my day, my week, my month.

But I hope you will all not give up and will fight the good fight. There were plenty of anglers around watching these guys pull the fish out of the water. But I bet nobody was willing to get involved, even to simply call 911 and make some trouble. I wish there were some guys there to grab those M-fuggers with me.


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

Where there is DC jurisdiction, if you see this kind of outrage going on... you can call Dan Ryan, DC Enforcement on his Cell at 410-533-1190 7 days a week. US Fish and Wildlife Enforcement is in Richmond, VA. and I believe the Enforcement person's name is Chris Mini. It's our resources. We don't have to let scumbags walk off with our fish and wildlife.


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## bigjim5589 (Jul 23, 2005)

MD's report a poacher hot line is 1-800-635-6124, should you be in MD.


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## sand flea (Oct 24, 1999)

Good for you. It's easy to look the other way but you did the right thing. And shame on the cops for not bothering to do anything.


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## zam (Jun 16, 2004)

should of called NRP and said they were commercial fishermen poaching, they would of got there right after they called all the news networks


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## surfnsam (Apr 28, 2008)

Good for you! The scum


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## jigmeister (Feb 23, 2013)

zam said:


> should of called NRP and said they were commercial fishermen poaching, they would of got there right after they called all the news networks


You know it Zam, but this is in DC, where there is almost never any reinforcement of fishing laws.


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## lng (Sep 11, 2013)

How do you know they are Vietnamese? or you are just another M-fugger?


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## gregtokoolman (Jan 26, 2014)

There are two rules on Pierandsurf.com:
1) No commercial advertising or spamming. Discussing retailers or linking to their products is fine UNLESS you are the owner of the business or have a relationship with the owner. Business promotion is a privilege limited to advertisers. 
2) Don't be a jerk.

"They seem to be speaking in Vietnamese and without any racism intended a few of them also look to be Vietnamese."

IF YOU ARE TRYING NOT TO BE RACIST PLEASE LEAVE OUT THAT TYPE OF INFORMATION. BY YOU LEAVING THAT INFORMATION IN YOUR POST; YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY TRYING TO DISCRIMINATE A RACE OF PEOPLE. 

Please leave Race and any other sensitive topics to yourself.

"look to be Vietnamese" Big NONO


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## IIJoNII (Apr 19, 2010)

Uh... First off, Greg, Vietnamese is an ethnicity, not race. I do agree, however, that if naming(by assumption or otherwise) a person or people has no relevance to your post then it might better to leave that detail out. 

With that said, I don't care if you're Vietnamese, Korean, of Latin descent, or Klingon. If I witness poaching in any shape or form you can bet your bottom dollar I will go out of my way to report it. I'm also Vietnamese, so I take it especially personal when I encounter Vietnamese offenders. I've even forbade family members from fishing with me because of their unlawful habits and disregard for wildlife conservation. I guess what I mean to say is poacher is a poacher regardless of their ethnic background. 

Sorry for digressing. Kudos to you, Dauntless, for being so persistent. Someone's got to protect the fish population because they're not going to contact the authorities themselves! :]


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## Penn626 (Jun 24, 2005)

:beer:


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## 1BadF350 (Jul 19, 2006)

HOLD ON! Nothing in Dauntless' post was racist. He simply gave a description of the perpetrators as best he could. If you called the cops on someone and they asked for a description, what would you say? "Uh, sorry I cant tell you cuz I might be labelled a racist". The amount of fake outrage and butthurt around here when it comes to this is laughable. You race card throwers need to put them back in your pockets and understand when someone is ACTUALLY being racist instead of throwing them out just to stir the pot.


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## Talapia (Apr 27, 2003)

This happens every year. I do not think that the post was racist at all. On the other hand every single poaching incident or allegation that involves a hispanic, asian, or immigrant almost always includes their race or nationality. There have been a large number of high profile poaching crimes involving caucasions but you will almost never hear anything about their race. You will just hear their name and that they were poachers. I think that for most of us a poacher is a poacher and that is all that needs to be said.


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## Garboman (Jul 22, 2010)

gregtokoolman said:


> There are two rules on Pierandsurf.com:
> 1) No commercial advertising or spamming. Discussing retailers or linking to their products is fine UNLESS you are the owner of the business or have a relationship with the owner. Business promotion is a privilege limited to advertisers.
> 2) Don't be a jerk.
> 
> ...


As a child I begged by Father to take me to Chain Bridge and he a non fisherman would oblige me from time to time by parking his car by Pimmit Run and likely with some uncomfortable moments supervising my 10 year old ability to navigate the rocky descent to the River at the base of Chain Bridge.

In the 1960's the area was frequented mostly by fishermen of Black and White heritage, because people of those two races made up the majority of the areas population

I remember a tall Black man passing me on the trail down to the river, the man was carrying a monster of a Channel Catfish, bigger even than the ones I read about in Field and Stream and Boys Life, to this day 50 years later I still remember that particular fish

During the 1960's Shad and Herring Runs and the late April afternoon Rock fights where the male spawning Stripers left huge swirls and boils on the deep green waters of the Potomac, it seemed like a free for all at the time, there were no limits, no restrictions on species, there was only opportunity for those who ventured the trek down to the River.

As darkness began to fall People would struggle to get their huge catches out of the Gorge, and into the trunks of their Ford Galaxies and Chevy Biscaynes, the cars of the working class, you did not see too many Lincolns and Caddilacs parked along Pimmit Run.

I used to fish for Stripers each Spring using a Fletcher boat and the bait had to be fresh Herring, which in those days you took by snagging, we caught a lot of Stripers

Life got in the way and when the Striper Moratorium took place in Maryland I gravitated to the OBX

I happened to be back in the DC area when the Rodney King verdict came out and Blacks of Los Angeles responded with pent up anger, humiliation and violence

The day after the riots started I found my self with a free morning and I set out in a Fletchers boat with my gear and intent on getting enough herring to last though the upcoming low tide which if you know any thing about the Potomac around Chain Bridge that is when you want to have a line in.

I managed to fill my cooler with fat, bloody wonderful Herring in short order

I rowed over to the Virginia shore and there was a Black man about my age sitting on a fish desolate part of the river, he had walked down a Billy Goat Trail to get to the River and with the tide beginning to drop he had the option of either climbing back up the bluff or sitting around fishing a shallow fish less flat at mid day.

That morning Los Angeles and the image of a young black male pulling a white truck driver out of his vehicle and hitting him on the head with a brick and then being captured forever on video laughing at the hapless victim.

I called out to the Black man sitting on the Virginia shore and asked him if he wanted to come aboard and go after Stripers

There was no hesitation on his part so I rowed over and picked him up

I would like to say that we tore up the Stripers, but we didn't we caught a couple, along with a few Channel Cats and I placed the Striper I caught on the stringer of my new mate

We spoke a bit about the events in Los Angeles and how it seemed like the promise of peace marches of 1964 had ended in failure after the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy

By association with our separate races both he and I were guilty of injustices both past and present.

We went back to fishing and after the tide ebbed I rowed back over to the Virginia Shore and let my new mate off, wishing him well in life and he of me

I went back to Chain Bridge in 2004 , the place was littered with trash, people were stuffing illegal Stripers into their coolers and throwing nets for Herring and Shad, the Springs free for all that occurred in the 1960's was on again only this time it was illegal and it was disturbing

If the purported Vietnamese cast net poachers had been Irish or Armenian or from Bangladesh, our White kids from the suburbs I imagine the original Poster would have made the same call to the DNR or Police or whomever he called that did not respond either through indifference or lack of resources or plain apathy.

It is hard to leave race out of anything, but sometimes like in that Fletcher boat back in 1991 after South Central Los Angeles burned you can put it aside for just one tide and just go fishing.....


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

lng said:


> How do you know they are Vietnamese? or you are just another M-fugger?


How do I know? Because I live with a Vietnamese woman for the last 5+ years. How do you like that answer? And when we hear other Vietnamese talk - she tells me that accent is from the North, and that accent is from Hue, and that accent is from the South, etc. And when we run across other Asians, she has opinions on Koreans, and opinions on Chinese, and opinions on Filipinos. How do you like that answer?

So if she has the right to tell me who is Korean and who is Chinese, I figured if I see six guys down by the River, and they seem to be speaking Vietnamese, and they look Vietnamese, maybe they are Vietnamese.

You can call me a Caucasian if you like but I am not sure how much of my gene pool actually came from the Caucasus Mountain region.


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

lng said:


> How do you know they are Vietnamese? or you are just another M-fugger?


And frankly, we all have low rent scumbags in each of our own communities. If you tell me there are scummy Caucasians, of course I agree. Charles Manson was a scummy Caucasian. I would have dialed 911 if Charles Manson were poaching fish from the Potomac as well.

OK M-Fugger?


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

As I said in another post, I live with a Vietnamese woman for the last 5+ years. If this is a poaching gang selling fish to Restaurants in the MD/VA/DC area, we need information to identify them and root them out. Viets are super people like everyone else. If there are some bad actors in the community, we need to find them and put them away.


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

So let's have one day devoted to outing Caucasian M-fuggers who poach massive amounts of fish? Let's do it once a week! Are Caucasians all from the Caucasus Mountains? Are Swedes Caucasians? Folks from Asia can be as wonderful as anybody and as racist as anybody. Please don't invoke racism because I know what Korean folks thinks about races, and what Japanese think, and what Chinese think... so I would leave it alone. Let's go fish! But if you see poaching going on- call it in! Even Caucasian poachers! Nail them and write about it! I will be happy!!


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

That is beautifully written Garboman... very nice. I am not a long-time Chain Bridge fisherman and this was actually my first time down there. You can be sure that I did not go down their with an attitude about race or which race or ethnic group is likely to be down there, massively poaching. I had not such thoughts.

And if it were Armenians or Turks, White or Black, I would have been just as angry and I would have either walked up to them and told them to stop (if I had the balls) or called the police just as I did. I think it was the arrogance of this particular 1/2 dozen people, on this particular occasion, that astounded me. They were already there at 5:00 PM when I arrived and they were just perhaps finishing up when I left at 9:00 PM. They had two big cast nets going right under the Bridge and were loading up trashbags with fish and taking them back to the parking lot, it was outrageous. The reason I kept calling 911 obsessively is because I kept seeing those nets coming out of the river and those fish disappearing and it just outraged me. For sure, they could have White, they could have been Black, they could have been Hispanic, no question about it. This time, the particular individuals I saw were what they were. I am going to go back down there by this weekend for sure and I will have my cellphone with me and if I can round up other anglers to help me stop whatever outrage I see, I will do that. If it is just me that cares about doing something, I will call the Police.

Best, D-


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

Thank you. You are a good and thoughtful person. Regards, Dauntless.


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## pods (Sep 10, 2013)

Dauntless, don't get bent out of shape because someone has a problem with what you described. Good job on saying something. I remember when I was younger fishing a popular spot in an upstate NY river. Used to hold tons of smallmouth bass, walleye, muskie, cats, etc.
Every saturday I went I saw people fishing and anything that came in on their lines went into a bucket. Suckers, bream, smallies, walleye, rock bass you name it. All sizes and countless numbers. Saw a DEC guy at the parking lot and told him one time. He nodded and pretended to care. Nobody ever said a thing to them, probably for fear of being thought of as racist or picking on people who were different. Not even the DEC would ask for a license or speak about limits.
Long story short, area dropped in fishing quality to where nobody even fished it much anymore.
Kudos to you for saying something.


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## CJS (Oct 2, 2006)

When Garbo writes a book, I will buy it. 

A poacher is a poacher. Shifting the discussion (arguing about) to whether they are white or black or Vietnamese only buries the good part of the thread, the part at the beginning with all the contact info for the authorities. 

This is a fishing forum, not a sociology debate.


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## Migs (Oct 8, 2013)

Wow that was an amazing story! I'll be thinking about this next time i'm down there! Thank you for sharing Garboman!


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## BAYFISHER (Jul 6, 2001)

maybe LA or else where it might touch the line of race , but what the hell was he suppose to say about a description? they had zebra stripes of another color? comon fellas give it a break, isnt life twisted enough? and for him to witness what he did, was indeed a crime, and did warrant arrest fines and jail for them. As for officers. gdamn shame on you, and as our lovely dnr may read some of this, @ LEAST THEY SHOULD LIGHT A FIRE, SO TO SPEAK UNDER THE BUTTS OF THOSE WHO DID NOT RESPOND. SHAD are illegal to take from the frikin gitgo! you feelin me bros?


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## lng (Sep 11, 2013)

see u at the bridge


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## lng (Sep 11, 2013)

see u at the bridge Dauntless


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## whenican (Feb 21, 2013)

It is sad when you see poaching going on. Last year in 2 locations in PG County I saw
fishermen getting ticketed for possessing of hickory shad. And yesterday @ Lake Artemesia I saw a guy being ticketed for fishing for trout with 4 rods. So, they do get caught sometimes.


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## DauntlessRV (Aug 15, 2012)

Yep. See you there. We will report back together.


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