I was ice fishing this Saturday when a young couple, their 4 - 6 yr old child and the grandfather walked up to our ice fishing group and starting asking questions. It was strange but nice. They wanted to know more about ice fishing (they were driving by and decided to stop). The little girl was extremely interested and we let her pick up our poles and hold the line. Well, on one of our rods we hooked up with a bow, and we offered for her to reel it in. She did to the best of a 5 year old's-no fishing experience ability, and we lifted it out of the hole. If was great to see the expression on her face and that of her family as she looked at the fish. She even held it for a picture for her mother. It was really cool. Well, we then offered for her to take it home with her. A gentlemen fishing about 20 yards away (close enough to watch what was going on and close enough to ask how we were catching our fish...as we kindly obliged a few minutes earlier)...objected to her taking the fish. He said it was illegal as we were donating wildlife on the lake. We disagreed with him as we felt that she had caught the fish, but we didn't want to cause any scene on the lake, and so we said "sorry" and released it down the hole. I believe this man to be incorrect. To premise this, we were never near our limit (we weren't trying to reduce our possesion), we never keep our limit (besides a few fish to fry at home), and it would have been foolish, as we caught and released over 45 fish that day (slow day, really). According to the law, the little girl didn't need a license, nor does she need to use her parent's license (who incidentally had one). To the best of her ability she reeled it in. The guy said that she needed to have her own pole. I could not find that in the rule book. Can't she borrow a pole? Does the child have to be fishing completely unaided, hooking, reeling, and landing for it to be theirs? Does she have to walk off the lake with a pole? For those of you with children or that fished as children, did you not help or receive help when you were that age, but still counted the fish as the child's? I may be wrong. This was a strange and rare situation. I feel bad that instead of leaving the girl and parents with a good memory and possibly getting them more involved with fishing, the opposite occurred. Yes, the law should be followed, but would the law have been broken in this case? As a side note, the gentleman came over later and apologized for being possibly overbearing. He seems like a nice guy, so I'm not trying to lambaste him. The situation really bothered me, and so I would like to know: Would that have been illegal?