Lazar and Slave Lazareski plead guilty to overfishing rainbow trout in the Goulburn River for ‘cultural reasons’
Two Macedonian brothers busted with more than four times the legal limit of rainbow trout have claimed they were overfishing for “cultural reasons”.
South East
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Two Macedonian brothers who caught four times the legal limit of rainbow trout during a fishing trip to country Victoria told a court their large haul was because of “cultural reasons”.
Slave, 68, of Dandenong – and Mulgrave’s Lazar Lazareski, 74, pleaded guilty in the Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on October 23, after fisheries officers caught them with a bag of rainbow trout on the Goulburn River in Acheron.
The court heard the brothers had been fishing in the state’s northeast in September last year when they were approached by two plain-clothed fisheries officers..
Officers saw Slave using fish ova as bait, which is illegal because of the biosecurity risk it exposes to salmon and trout farms in the region.
On the shores of the river, the brothers had a combined 20 fish, with 13 measuring larger than 35cm.
The court heard the legal limit for rainbow trout was five fish per person, with only two longer than 35cm.
After interviewing Slave and Lazar, the officers searched their car, where they discovered a further 26 fish with 15 of them measuring more than 35cm.
Both brothers made full admissions and co-operated with the officers.
Only Slave fronted the court on Wednesday, as Lazar — who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in January — was undergoing treatment.
Lawyers for the brothers told Magistrate Christina Windisch that fishing was “culturally important in the Macedonian community” and the excess fish would be taken home and frozen for use on a later date.
Ms Windisch said nobody was “above the law”.
“Whether it’s culturally significant that you have all these fish, there is a legal reason why you can’t,” she said.
“If we didn’t have regulations around how much fish people could take there is a risk species could be wiped out.”
Ms Windisch sentenced the brothers to 12-month good behaviour bonds and ordered them to pay $200 each to the court fund.
