A man from Wheatley has been fined thousands of dollars for violating fishing rules.
The man pleaded guilty to failing to retrieve gill nets from Lake Erie within a specific time frame, failing to report lost nets to a conservation officer, allowing fish suitable for human consumption to spoil, failing to submit an accurate and complete daily catch report and failing to maintain an accurate and complete logbook.
He was fined a total of $4,500.
In March 2025, conservation officers received a complaint from the public regarding an abandoned net in the lake near Wheatley.
The conservation officers located the net and determined through investigation that the man, who is the captain of the commercial fishing vessel Dorothy J, had set gill nets on March 3, 2025, with some of these nets being lost and abandoned.
The Ontario Court of Justice in Windsor heard the case in late October 2025, where the man was fined.