New York Environmental Conservation Officers (ECOs) had a busy spring busting poachers for catching and hiding striped bass before the season opener on April 15. Over the last two months, officers have obtained over 90 illegally-possessed fish—some of them hidden in the sand, behind rocks and logs, and strangely enough, underneath traffic cones.
On March 16, uniformed and undercover officers hit up striped bass hotspots on overnight patrols. One unsuspecting angler, unknowingly fishing next to an undercover officer, reeled in a couple stripers and kept them. The undercover officer called in ECOs Ableson and Keegan, who ticketed the angler for possession of the out-of-season fish.
A few weeks later, a group of anglers was filleting a…
