The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is continuing its investigation into an illegal netting incident in which poachers netted and then abandoned, thousands of pounds of Spanish mackerel in a huge gillnet.

"This is clearly a large scale poaching operation. It takes a pretty big net boat to set and retrieve 750 yards of gillnet with 7,000 pounds of fish," said CCA Florida Executive Director Ted Forsgren. "In addition, that quantity of fish was certainly headed for a major fish house processing operation. This stuff wasn't going into a pickup truck for backdoor restaurant sales."

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) contacted the FWC at 1 a.m. on March 18 and reported the abandoned gillnet in the Gulf of Mexico off of Sarasota County. FWC officers located the net just offshore and south of Midnight Pass. It took numerous trips from U.S.C.G. and FWC vessels to recover the 750 yards of monofilament gillnet and more than 7,000 pounds of Spanish mackerel.

The fish hit by the poachers were part of the huge schools of large Spanish mackerel that have been seen by anglers off the beaches this spring in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

"The water has been very clear and over one, 3-day period I saw the biggest school of mackerel I've ever seen in my life," said Captain Tom Stephens of Sarasota. "It was a steady, non-stop flow of fish, close in near the beaches, that stretched for at least 10 miles."

"If this type of large scale, organized poaching is going on with Spanish mackerel, imagine what is happening to pompano which has a dockside value four times greater than mackerel," said Forsgren.

FWC officials stated that their investigation is continuing to determine the individuals responsible for setting and abandoning the illegal gillnet. CCA Florida indicated that it will provide updates on the status of the investigation as information becomes available to the public.