Countries where handling a salmon in suspicious circumstances is a crime

Handling a salmon in suspicious circumstances is a real crime in England and Wales, under section 32 of the Salmon Act 1986, and the same Act gave Scotland an offence of its own.

What the law says

Section 32 was originally headed ‘Handling salmon in suspicious circumstances’. You commit the offence if you receive a salmon, or help keep, move or get rid of one, when you believe it was illegally caught or it would be reasonable for you to suspect it. So the suspicious part is what you know about the fish, not how you look while carrying it. The penalty is a fine.

You have a defence if no offence was actually committed in relation to that fish. You’re also fine if you were acting in good faith to prevent or detect crime, or to investigate or treat a disease.

Has anyone actually been done for it?

Yes. In a case reported in 2024, officers from Natural Resources Wales were looking for an angler reported for using illegal equipment, and they found a man matching the description with a large salmon hanging out of his sleeve. He admitted trying to hide it in his jacket, and he pleaded guilty to breaching the catch-and-release rules three times and to one count of handling a salmon in suspicious circumstances.

It isn’t only salmon any more

In 2009 the law was widened to trout, eels, lampreys, smelt and freshwater fish, and selling was added. The heading now says ‘fish’, which is less good, but salmon are still covered.

The Act covers England, Wales and Scotland, so Northern Ireland stays green. I haven’t checked every other country in Europe for a suspicious salmon law, so there may be more of these out there.

If you like this sort of thing, see which foreigners each country named the cockroach after or Wyoming compared with the other 49 states.

Sources: Salmon Act 1986, section 32, Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, section 229, Lowering the Bar.