Caught after bragging on Facebook, two men from Northumbria have been given fines, ordered to do community work and were fortunate to get suspended rather than custodial sentences after being convicted of poaching salmon.
Evidence for the prosecution of Connor Bell and Michael Hutchinson came from social media posts and mobile phone videos shot while poaching near Fatfield on the River Wear.
The lawyer representing the Environment Agency, Matthew Treece, told the court that files on Bell’s mobile phone and Hutchinson’s social media pages had highlighted multiple weekends of illegal netting during the summers of 2020 and 2021, along with photographs of both men posing with catches of up to 14 fish at a time. Images from Hutchinson’s Facebook profile also showed a relative, with the captured fish, along with comments from Hutchinson encouraging them to become a “fine young poacher.”
‘You don’t know how lucky you are to avoid going on a trip to Durham this morning. I view and the law views the things you were up to as extremely serious,’ District Judge Garland told the defendants in handing out penalties.
‘These weren’t boyish pranks. You were out there putting a large net across a confined space of river where it was highly likely you were going to catch fish of one sort or another. And you did. If you hadn’t gone around bragging on Facebook about what fish you were catching, you wouldn’t have been in as much trouble as you are.’
David Shears, Senior Fisheries Enforcement Officer for the Environment Agency in the North East commented that with salmon stocks reaching crisis in many of England’s rivers, this level of illegal activity could have a serious impact on the sustainability of future stocks in the River Wear.
‘That’s why we take reports of suspected poaching seriously and work closely with the police to take action where appropriate,’ he said.
‘We’re committed to tackling illegal fishing of all kinds whether online or off and as this case clearly demonstrates, we will take action, especially where potentially damaging methods are used.’
