WATERBURY — An angler who caught a huge fish in the White River and kept it but didn’t accurately identify his catch may be paying as much as $1,500 for his mistake as well as losing his licenses for three years, according to a press release from the state.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Ryan McCullough of Bethel was fishing downstream of the federal fish hatchery in Stockbridge on July 25 when he hooked and landed a 9.5-pound anadromous Atlantic salmon that measured 31½ inches long. He misidentified it as a brown trout and kept it. A photo of the big fish appeared in a local newspaper.
Fisheries biologists who had previously put radio-transmitters in Atlantic salmon that had migrated upstream in the Connecticut River to spawn noticed the photo. They also discovered one of the two salmon they were monitoring in the White River was now transmitting its signal from dry land in Bethel.
State Game Warden Keith Gallant turned up the missing salmon in a freezer in Bethel and McCullough was issued a citation to appear in Windsor Superior Court on Sept. 27.
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