Angler used antique phone to catch fish, and that’s illegal, Georgia cops say

Illegal fishing reached a new level in rural Georgia when a man used an antique crank phone to electrocute fish, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

The discovery was made around 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, when two game wardens noted a man and woman acting suspiciously along a creek in Wilkes County, the DNR Law Enforcement Division reported in an Aug. 19 Facebook post.

“As (game wardens) approached, they observed the male subject moving away with a wooden box in his hands,” officials said in the post.

“As they got closer, the man threw the box into the creek. Sgt. (Matt) Garthright was able to retrieve the box from the creek and identified it as an outlawed fishing technique — an old crank telephone used to shock fish.”

The 29-year-old man is from Mississippi and was in Georgia for work, Garthright told McClatchy News in an email.

The two suspects were questioned and neither had valid fishing licenses, DNR officials said.

“They were given the opportunity to get in compliance by immediately purchasing fishing licenses online. The male subject was charged with shocking fish and the old crank telephone was confiscated,” the department reported.

Electricity is known to temporarily stun fish, causing them to float to the surface, experts say.

Crank telephones were among the earliest models of the telephone, with internal batteries and a crank “used for signaling the operator or other directly connected telephones,” according to Antique Telephones.

Wilkes County is about a 110-mile drive east from Atlanta.