Va. woman pleads guilty to lying about illegal striper fishing

Federal fisheries investigators since last year have been looking into illegal striper fishing operations off the coast of Virginia and have questioned numerous charter captains and their customers.

On Tuesday, they got a break in the case when an Orange County woman pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria to lying to investigators about a trip last winter with a charter out of Virginia Beach.

Julie Smoot Jennings, 49, of Locust Grove must pay a $1,000 fine, perform 100 hours of community service and will be placed on supervised probation for one year for the misdemeanor. She admitted to knowingly giving false information to special agents of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement and to Virginia Marine Police Officers.

It is illegal to target or possess striped bass in federal waters between three miles and 200 miles off the Atlantic coast.

According to court papers made available Tuesday, Jennings was fishing in federal waters on Feb. 12 with “Capt. RCW on the charter boat SW.” According to court papers, “Capt. RCW is the captain and owner of the vessel that operates fishing charters out of Virginia Beach.”

When questioned in May, Jennings told investigators that the boat’s crew was targeting only bluefish in federal waters and that anglers were told by the captain to release any stripers. No striper, she said, was kept or later dumped overboard when a VMRC marine patrol boat approached.

In court Tuesday, Jennings admitted she was lying.

Earlier this year, several charter captains had their logs, GPS chart plotters and other electronics confiscated by investigators.

Striped bass season in Virginia is under way, with the Chesapeake Bay season continuing through Dec. 31. But it is the ocean season – open through the spring, when many fish school outside the three-mile line – that has drawn scrutiny from law enforcement officers.