Agent: Sentence Is Catch And Release Three Men Fined, Lose License A Year For Poaching Endangered Bull Trout

It cost David Barley $500 to snag a bull trout last summer - and the right to fish for a year.

The Rev. Barley, founder of the anti-Semitic America’s Promise Ministries, was fined $500 Tuesday for illegally catching a bull trout while fishing in Lightning Creek, a tributary of the Clark Fork River.

Barley, 44, was cited along with his son, Christopher Barley, 18, and friend Kory Holderman, 37, on Aug. 6, 1998. Idaho Department of Fish and Game officer John Scott saw the three snagging bull trout from Lightning Creek that day.

Bull trout are an endangered species.

Magistrate Court Judge Barbara Buchanan sentenced the Barleys to pay $400 each in criminal fines and a $100 civil fine. She also ordered their fishing licenses suspended for a year and placed them on probation for a year.

The Barleys and Holderman all received a withheld judgment on charges of obstructing an officer and were put on probation for six months for that offense.

Scott said he was disappointed with the sentences after Tuesday’s hearing.

“It’s disheartening,” he said. “To put that kind of time and effort in … it’s not a great deterrent.”

The fishermen have maintained that they didn’t know they caught bull trout.

“There’s a problem in being able to identify these fish,” Barley said after the sentencing.

When asked what he thought he had caught, Barley said, “It was a trout. There’s lots of different trout.”

Deputy Prosecutor Mike Rosenthal and Scott contend that the Barleys knew what kind of fish they caught. Regardless, the charges would be the same.

Scott said the Barleys were parked right next to a sign that shows how to distinguish a bull trout from other fish.

Scott, Rosenthal and the conservation group Trout Unlimited, were hoping for a more stringent sentence.

“I just wish they would take it seriously,” said Loren Albright, a member of Trout Unlimited. “Five hundred dollars in this day and age isn’t that much.”

When Scott stopped the fishermen last summer, one dashed off into the woods while Scott disarmed Christopher Barley. The elder Barley denied that there was a third person involved.

“When I asked the reverend who the third person was, he flat-out lied,” Scott said. “Meanwhile, I had someone potentially armed behind my back.”

After citing the Barleys, Scott waited four hours to catch Holderman. He was sitting in the woods waiting at 10:30 p.m. when he heard someone drive up and call out for Holderman, he said. He then followed the car and later apprehended Holderman.

The next bull trout poaching case he has, Scott said, he may take to federal court, where the maximum fine is $5,000.

Rosenthal said the reason he agreed to a plea bargain was because a jury trial wouldn’t necessarily mean a stiffer sentence.

In District Court, where the Barleys were sentenced, the maximum fine is $1,000, plus a $100 civil fine, for taking a bull trout.

“People who are hunting or fishing in the state need to be very careful that they know the species of animal they are dealing with,” Buchanan said when issuing the sentences.

Susan Drumheller can be reached at (208) 263-6441 or by e-mail at susand@spokesman.com.