“Who’s that on the radio?” I asked.
“It sounds like Bob Perry from up in Ventura,” Szody said, turning on his left blinker and preparing to pass one of a thousand slow-moving vehicles on its way to the Eastern Sierras.
“He seems to be doing some kind of travel log on the car-to-car setting of his radio.”
“Bob likes to talk. There’s probably some rookie warden following him.”
“Not to change the subject, but how do you like this new patrol rig?”
“I can finally go off the pavement without getting stuck,” replied Szody, as he again turned on his left blinker and prepared to pass a motor home. “I’m not going to miss the Matador.”
“That’s Mount Whitney Hatchery on the left,” boomed Warden Perry over the radio. “It was built in 1916 and was the first state trout hatchery in California. You should go in there on your way back. The old buildings are beautiful.”
“Unbelievable!” I said, laughing out loud. “What a character!”
Warden Szody and I continued north through Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and eventually into Bishop. We reached Bishop Friday afternoon, the day before trout opener. As we rolled into town, we heard the Inyo County Sheriff’s dispatcher come over the radio asking for any Fish and Game unit in the area of Lake Sabrina—located about fifteen miles southwest of Bishop.
“Let’s wait and see if any of the local guys answer up,” I said. “We don’t want to step on any toes.”
There was another call for assistance. According to dispatch, a group of three individuals were jumping the gun and taking stringers of trout near the south end of the lake. They were driving an older model blue station wagon with a white top. No license plate was given. Using our radio call numbers, I advised dispatch that Warden Szody and I would be responding. We had located Lake Sabrina on the map and by the time I hung up the microphone, Szody’s new Dodge Power Wagon was already headed up Highway 168.
About a mile before we reached Lake Sabrina, we saw a blue station wagon rounding the corner. “That has to be them,” said Szody. “The driver’s eyes looked like saucers when he saw us.”
Szody quickly turned the patrol truck around and headed back down the mountain. Within minutes we were bearing down on the car with our red spotlight clearly visible in the driver’s rearview mirror. Two men appearing to be in their early twenties were seated in front, with a third man, about the same age, in back. Several fishing rods were visible through the back window. The station wagon slowed and continued down the highway until it came to a wide spot and pulled over.
Szody approached from the driver’s side and I held back a little, standing next to the right rear of the suspect vehicle. My partner pointed to the registration sticker on the rear license plate, which had expired. In our experience, if a person failed to keep his vehicle registration up to date, he was more likely to commit minor Fish and Game violations. We both noticed a red-and-white ice chest in the back section of the station wagon and exchanged a knowing look.
“Have you guys been fishing?” asked Szody.
“No, we were just checking out the lake for tomorrow,” replied the driver, whose sunburned face told another story. His pale skin had turned a bright shade of pink from overexposure to the high altitude sunlight.
Szody and I always enjoyed a little game of cat and mouse, especially with a trio of brain surgeons like these guys. We asked a series of questions aimed at leading to the closed-season trout we were looking for.
“Do you all have your fishing licenses?” asked Szody.
“We weren’t fishing,” repeated the driver, “but I have a fishing license.”
The young man pulled out his fishing license and handed it to Szody. His two friends, expressions blank, did not reply.
“Do you guys have any fish in the car?” I asked.
“No! I told you we haven’t been fishing,” insisted the driver.
The driver’s nervous tone and the group’s body language were dead giveaways. “We’d like to take a look in your ice chest,” I said, pointing at it through the back window. “Please pull it out for us.”
The driver exited the car and walked around to the back. He pulled out the ice chest and emphatically pointed out that it was, in fact, empty.
The man in the backseat, who had been quiet up until that point, was apparently feeling more confident. “He told you we haven’t been fishing,” he said. Ignoring the sarcastic comment from the backseat, I reached into the ice chest and ran my finger along the wet slime on the bottom. My finger smelled unmistakably of fish. These characters had either thrown the fish out the window after seeing us pass by or hidden them somewhere in the car. The fact that the man in the backseat had not moved was particularly suspicious.
“Would you please step out of the car,” said Szody, pointing to the man in the backseat. Ignoring my partner’s instructions, the young man leaned back slightly, his boots firmly tucked under the front passenger seat. “I’m going to ask you one more time to step out of the car,” commanded Szody, this time with more authority. The man reluctantly climbed out of the car. I escorted him to a spot on the side of the road where the driver was already seated.
“What do we have here?” Warden Szody leaned through the back door, reached under the front passenger seat and pulled out a metal stringer. Attached to the stringer were nine twelve-inch brook trout. Szody subsequently walked to the other side of the car and reached under the driver’s seat. He pulled out a second stringer containing five more brook trout, all the same size.
During the days leading up to the trout opener, the Department of Fish and Game had stocked many of the area lakes and streams with catchable-sized trout. Lake Sabrina’s allotment was a load of beautiful brookies, raised and planted by the Mount Whitney Trout Hatchery. These three San Bernardino residents had somehow found out about the fish planting and decided not to wait until Saturday. They were each charged with joint possession of fourteen trout during closed season. The trout and all their fishing gear were seized as evidence.
“That was a pretty good start,” I said, as we pulled onto the highway and headed for Bishop. “I have a feeling this is going to be a busy weekend.”
II
Warden Szody and I arrived back in Bishop just in time for the orientation meeting. Ken Brown, the Bishop Patrol Captain, advised us that we would be assigned to the north end of Crowley Lake for the weekend. I had worked that area the previous year and was familiar with it. “Let’s check into the motel, get something to eat and run up to Crowley this evening,” I suggested, as we walked out of the Bishop Fish and Game office. “We have to be up at the crack of dawn, so we don’t want to be out too late.”
It was just after dark when Szody and I approached Crowley Lake. Driving up Highway 395, we crossed over Crooked Creek, one of the lake’s many tributaries. This small stream flowed through a large culvert, allowing the water to pass under the highway and eventually into the lake. “Why is that car parked there?” I asked, pointing toward the north side of the highway. Szody eased the patrol truck off the highway and onto a wide spot near the suspicious vehicle.
Gently closing my door, I walked over to a small, dark-colored sedan. “The hood is still warm,” I whispered, as Szody approached. I shined my flashlight into the car, which appeared to be empty, except for two pairs of shoes on the front floorboard. I pointed out that the occupants of the car had apparently changed their shoes, but my voice was barely audible over the roar of cars and trucks passing by.
“Did you hear that?” asked Szody, pointing toward the culvert. “Somebody’s in there.” We walked to the north end of the culvert, where the stream flowed outward in the direction of the lake. A peek inside revealed a flickering light at the other end.
“There’s one—get it,” said an excited voice, followed by the sound of two or more people splashing through the water. “Throw me the net!”
Based on what we had just heard, there was little doubt as to what the p
eople on the other end of the culvert were up to. Szody and I clambered over the north shoulder of the highway and headed down the steep bank on the other side. We could see the silhouettes of what appeared to be two male adults climbing up the hill in our direction. Szody and I hunkered down and waited for the figures to approach. The man in the lead was within a few yards of us when Szody shined a flashlight in his face and said, “Trick or treat.”
The startled fish poacher immediately dropped the dip net he was carrying, fell backwards and tumbled ass over tea kettle all the way to the bottom. His surprised partner, halfway up the hill at the time, watched him roll by. Lying on the ground were three large German brown trout that had freed themselves from the dip net and begun flopping their way back toward the stream.
We climbed down the steep embankment and instructed the two violators to sit tight while I tended to the three trout. The man at the bottom was shaken but unhurt. One of the eighteen-inch trout had apparently just been captured. I held it upright in the water for a few seconds before it slithered out of my hand and darted upstream. The other two fish were too far gone and never recovered. We retained them as evidence, along with the dip net that had been used to capture them.
We walked the two men back to their car, where they were rewarded for their efforts with a pair of citations. Both were charged with unlawfully taking three trout in closed waters and illegal method of take—using a dip net.
III
When the sun began to rise on opening morning of trout season, Dave Szody and I were perched on a bluff overlooking Crowley Lake. “You have to see this,” I said, handing Szody a pair of binoculars. “There must be a fishing rod every three feet all the way around that lake. How would you like to check all of those fishing licenses?”
By this time in our careers, Dave Szody and I had learned that checking fishing licenses on a crowded lake could be chaotic. This large Eastern Sierra lake was as crowded as anything we had ever seen. Teamwork would be absolutely essential. From a distance, we watched people fish and looked for clues: Who was catching all of the fish? Were they putting their fish on individual stringers or community ones? Were they running fish up to their camps and returning?
Some Fish and Game wardens would simply walk along the bank of a crowded lake like this, checking licenses as they went. They might scratch out a few citations, but the recipients were usually misinformed people and not the deliberate violators. With such a large crowd to deal with, working that way often led to confusion and more than a few arguments.
When it was finally time for an approach, we decided that one of us would make the contacts while the other watched to see who suddenly reeled in his line, cut his line, or walked away from his fishing gear. With nowhere near enough wardens to check everyone on the lake, a certain amount of gamesmanship and strategy was necessary. By mid-afternoon, we had issued a dozen or so fishing license citations and were ready to sink our teeth into something more substantial.
Earlier we had run into a fish planting truck from the nearby Hot Creek Trout Hatchery. The driver, a Fish and Game employee, told us that someone had entered the hatchery the previous night and taken several of the brood stock. Brood stock were the large trout used to provide eggs for the hatchery. Most of them weighed five pounds or more. These valuable fish were maintained in separate ponds from the “catchable” trout that were planted in lakes and streams.
The intruders had not only stolen trout, but they had also broken into one of the hatchery buildings, taken a long-handled dip net off the wall and used it to capture the fish. “We found the net lying by the brood stock ponds this morning,” said the driver. “Next to it were fish eggs scattered all over the ground.”
Warden Szody and I were on a roll, having already caught several early season violators and a couple of individuals with over-limits. The possibility of catching somebody stealing trout from the state fish hatchery was too good to pass up. Both of us had brought our sleeping bags, so our plan was to spend the night on the cement floor of the hatchery building. We would take turns sleeping, allowing one of us to stay awake and watch out the window.
It was about 9:00 p.m. when we arrived at Hot Creek Hatchery. Arrangements had been made for us to sleep in a room connected to the main hatchery building. From that vantage point, we would have a clear view of the brood stock ponds. With all lights off, we settled in. We kept our uniforms on, in case it was necessary to move quickly, but removed our gun belts and boots.
Both of us had been up since 4:00 a.m., so staying awake would be a challenge. Particularly for me. By 10:30 p.m. I was in dreamland, leaving Szody to take the first watch. He was too keyed up to sleep anyway, having drunk half a pot of coffee.
A little after midnight, Szody heard a metallic thump coming from the adjacent hatchery building. The walls were metal and the slightest contact with a hard object produced a thump that resounded clearly in our building next door. Seconds later, he saw the silhouettes of two men walking outside near the brood stock ponds. One of them was carrying a long-handled dip net. “That guy just went into the building next door and got a dip net,” whispered Szody. “Steve, there’s somebody out there!”
Szody quickly put his boots on, and without lacing them, jumped to his feet. I had opened my eyes and was still trying to figure out where I was when my partner raced out the door. As I climbed out of my sleeping bag, I heard Szody’s voice coming from the brood stock ponds outside: “On your knees, you sons o’ bitches or I’ll blow your heads off!”
Brave talk for someone who had left his gun belt lying on the hatchery building floor. A second adult male voice cried out, “Don’t shoot.”
Running to the window, I was just in time to see two men drop to their knees and put their hands in the air. With both gun belts in one hand and my boots in the other, I bolted for the door. When I arrived at Szody’s side, the two fish thieves were on their knees next to a long-handled dip net and a flopping five-pound trout.
“Did you forget something?” I asked, as I handed Szody his gun belt. In stocking feet, I walked over and carefully placed the stressed-out trout back into one of the fish ponds.
We turned our attention to the two petrified fish thieves who were still on their knees with their backs facing us. Szody instructed them to produce identification.
The taller of the two was Bruce William Preston, twenty-five years old, from San Bernardino. His partner in crime was Mark Douglas Crooker, twenty-six years old, also from San Bernardino. They both worked out of a pipe fitter’s union in the Los Angeles area.
“What did you guys think you were doing?” asked Szody.
“We’re sorry,” replied Crooker. “We just wanted to take home a couple trophy-sized trout.”
I explained that they could go to jail for burglary and grand theft. Those large egg-producing fish were worth a lot of money to the State of California. Szody asked where they had gotten the net, although he already knew the answer: the long-handled dip net the thieves had used was exactly like the ones hanging on the wall inside the next building. Crooker admitted that they had gone inside the hatchery building and taken the net.
“We’re sorry,” said Preston, repeating what his buddy had said.
“Where are you guys staying?” I asked.
“We’re camped at Crowley Lake,” answered Crooker.
“How many people are in your camp?”
“Just the two of us. We have a camp trailer.”
“Okay, boys, we have your identification and we know where you work,” I said. “Now we’re going to follow you back to your camp.”
Our fish thieves already seemed worried, but telling them that we were going back to their camp put them in panic mode. They were terribly concerned about something, and Szody and I were pretty sure what it was. These were very likely the same misguided characters who had raided the hatchery the previous night.
“Let’s go,” said Szody.
We gave the two men a ride to their pickup, which they had parke
d a half mile down the road from the hatchery. I asked who owned the pickup. Crooker said it was his. “Then you drive,” I said. “Your buddy can ride with us.”
By keeping the two men apart, they would not be able to compare stories or plan some kind of subterfuge. It took about fifteen minutes to arrive at the camp trailer. I jumped out of the patrol vehicle and met Crooker before he had time to enter. We did not want to give him a chance to hide evidence.
A medium-sized ice chest was sitting outside, near the front door of the trailer. Inside the ice chest I found two limits of twelve-inch rainbows, seemingly identical to the hundreds of Crowley Lake trout that Dave and I had inspected earlier that day. When Szody and Preston joined us, I instructed Crooker to lead us inside. Opening the door to the refrigerator, I found two five-pound rainbows; both were carbon copies of the brood fish I had just seen flopping on the bank of the hatchery pond.
I pulled out my Miranda card and instructed Preston and Crooker to sit down while I said, “I want you guys to listen carefully. Please don’t say anything until I’m finished. ‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning, if you wish. You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements.’ ”
Crooker looked scared to death. Their big adventure had turned into a nightmare.
“These fish obviously came from the hatchery,” I continued. “We can easily have someone from the hatchery identify them.” Resuming the Miranda warning, I asked, “ ‘Do you both understand each of the rights I have explained to you?’ ” Both men answered in the affirmative. I finished reading from the Miranda card: “ ‘Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us at this time?’ ” I paused and stared straight into the eyes of the two men—it was clear that I meant business.
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