Strawberry today

[Kent]

A funny thing happened in the parking lot at the marina. I was in the boat as my wife was driving the Suburban up the ramp. She drove out around a few vehicles that were being checked by the UDWR on the road going through the parking lot (she didn’t notice that they were checking), and I was waiting for one of them to shout for us to stop, but no one said anything. She pulled back into the parking lot and stopped next to the last restroom on the west side of the parking lot. Immediately a man came up to my wife, wearing casual clothes, and a loose fitting camouflage shirt. He asked my wife, “How was fishing?”, and she answered that it was very good. He immediately parted his camouflage shirt and announced that he was a UDWR officer and asked if he could see the fish that we kept. I handed him our cooler and told him that I thought that we were legal. He carefully measured all five of our fish and found that they were all cutts and all under 15 inches (most were about 14 ½ inches long). He told us that they were fine, but I thought that I sensed a little disappointment in his voice, because I’m quite certain that he was sure that he was going to catch us with illegal fish after we went around their checkpoint. While cleaning them another officer asked me if those fish all belonged to me (I had four out that I was cleaning at the time) and I almost answered yes (meaning they belonged to our party) when instead I answered that they had all been measured by his partner wearing a camouflage shirt, but that he was welcome to measure them again. He said that I had described him precisely, so it wasn’t necessary. It didn’t occur to me for a few minutes that I would have had to do some explaining had I answered yes (because one person can only keep two cutts under 15 inches, not four).
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