'hold my beer and watch this!'

[hatidua]

It is the "selling" of the fish that is illegal without the permit. If they just put the fish in the freezer and ate it, perfectly legal.

I bought my HMS permit year after year after year, not because I enjoyed giving the government money, but because I wanted to give them less money, not more.

It is the "selling" of the fish that is illegal without the permit. If they just put the fish in the freezer and ate it, perfectly legal.

License-to-sell is a different critter than simply keeping for personal consumption but both require the annual tag. Catching/keeping an HMS off a dock is a no-no regardless of whether you want to sell it or not - and FL does not get a federal exemption on HMS species (that's akin to saying you can shoot elk, out of season, in downtown Denver as long as you don't want to sell it).

We used to get all kinds of inspectors at the aquarium. To top it off, we used a drug to tranquilize the fish and it had to be stored in a locked refrigerator.

You had BFT/YFT and billfish (or any HMS species) in your aquarium?

Link to the expensive tuna...

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/201...rcial-purposes

That's not the one I was thinking back to but that one certainly cost a whole lot more than I've ever paid for my annual HMS permit.