Mycept, there is no clear cut answer to your question. It is up to the individual officer to decide what enforcement action (verbal warning, written warning or summons) to take when they come across a violation. There are a number of variables involved such as past history of violations for the person, (we can and do check priors on our own in-house database so we know if someone has already received a warning), what the violation actually is and as most experienced officers develop a really good ability to sense if a person truly doesn't know the law or if they are lying to the officer (yes, it's true....people lie to the police...nobody on CTF would ever do that but there are members of the public that do). If it's a situation where it appears to be a lack of knowledge about an area or an honest mistake, the officer may issue a warning.

As far as the likelihood of a rec fisherman getting a warning, it happens all the time. We don't count tickets/arrests for the purpose of evaluating our officers. They are judged on quality of their work, not quantity. For example, in April there were a total of 274 inland recreational fishing incidents. Of these, officers issued 59 summonses and 77 written warnings. Generally the numbers of written warnings are higher than summonses as we also use enforcement action as a method of educating the public on the laws. If a person receives a written warning and go on to commit another violation at a later date, you would probably be safe to assume that they are going to get a summons next time they are caught.