Trouble finds guide

TALKEETNA — A fishing guide slapped in 2006 with a stringer of violations for which he paid $10,300 in fines has again found himself on the wrong side of the law.

Troopers acting on a tip tracked down Ray Blodgett, 53, of Fisherman’s Choice Charters, as he led a fishing trip on Fish Creek Aug. 7.

Troopers report four clients were fishing with salmon roe as bait and using two hooks on their lines.

“Fish Creek is a Trophy Rainbow Trout Special Management Area where only one un-baited single-hook artificial lure is allowed,” troopers report.

The clients: Linda Meyer and Craig Johnson of Clarissa, Minn., Michael Dawson of Reno, Nev., and Richard Mclean of Anchorage were each handed $110 tickets for fishing with unlawful methods and means.

Blodgett, meanwhile, was summonsed for aiding a client in a violation.

That charge was also leveled at him in 2006, along with charges of catching a king salmon and not keeping it.

That prior case hit the courts after Blodgett led a group of clients to fish in Clear Creek in the Talkeetna River drainage the day after king salmon season closed. That case centered around a videotape one of the clients made in which Blodgett said the season had closed the day before.

Nine king salmon were caught during the trip, eight of which were taken out of the water. King salmon cannot be caught unless the fisherman is going to keep them; catch-and-release injures the fish because they are so large, troopers wrote at the time. At the end of the case, Blodgett was fined $10,300 and sentenced to do 40 hours of community work service. At the time, his business was also called Fisherman’s Choice Charters.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.