Law enforcement officers arrested two men on Tampa Bay last week, and charged them with illegal use of a gillnet. The officers were on a night anti-poaching detail, responding to a tip about illegal gillnetting of mullet.

December is the peak of the black mullet run, when roe-laden adult fish make for offshore waters to spawn. Despite a voter-approved constitutional ban on entangling nets, each season some determined commercial fishers continue to chase the species' valuable roe, which is frozen and shipped to Pacific markets. Some use lawful castnets during the day, while others sneak out under cover of darkness to deploy large-mesh gillnets.

Many times those operating illegally deploy a lookout--and that's what Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officers first saw

near the Courtney Campbell Parkway on Tampa Bay.

After locating the blacked-out, working mullet skiff, officers Kristin Cason, Liz McCoy and Raymond Sheretz confronted Justin Sawyer, 30, and Calvin Broadhead, 28, both of Palm Harbor.

"The net was so loaded with mullet it was too heavy to dump," said Lt. Roger Young of the FWC, also on the detail. Young said mullet netters may make as much as $10,000 in a night. The haul Sawyer and Broadhead were allegedly making amounted to 6,000 pounds--likely $8,000 worth of fish. The net was approximately 26,000 square feet.

The two men were jailed on felony charges. They could face penalties of up to $5,000 each, and up to five years in prison.

One of the men reportedly had bragged about netting activities, telling a Pinellas County sheriff, in 2004, "Good luck trying to catch us."

Mullet poaching is a problem in many parts of Florida this time of year.

During the same week of the Tampa Bay charges, officers in Bay County, in northwest Florida, reported the seizure and destruction of three unattended gillnets.

FS