Ohio’s commercial fishing is a heavily scrutinized business

At the annual Ohio Sea Grant Charter Captain Conference in March, Lake Erie Law Enforcement Supervisor Matt Leibengood gave a summary of his crew’s 2023 efforts on the lake, which included an extensive look at how much the commercial netters are monitored.
A great deal of the Division of Wildlife’s monitoring is conducted with the use of electronic vessel tracking technology that follows the movements of all the trap net boats in real time using GPS tracking “pingers.” This reporter recently accompanied Law Enforcement Investigator Jason Hadsell as he demonstrated the effectiveness of the vessel monitoring system, which told him where the active trap net boats were, permitting Hadsell to meet them as they arrived at their docks.