I'm 23 and I've got at least 3 tickets in bodies of water where I wasn't allowed to fish during the ages of 16-20. One time a chopper circled me until east bay regional police picked me up. Never did take my gear. Each time the police officers were cool with me and asked me what I was catching them on. They told me they fishd it themselves. They even gave me a ride to my truck after giving me a ticket. As for the ticket, I'd go to court and get anywhere from 5-15 hours of community service.
I had my best fishing days at these places and I never did any harm to the areas I was fishing. Never kept a fish, never littered. People like fuzzy are anal about this because they don't have the b@lls to try it themselves. And anyways, The law does not come down on you for illegal fishing, it's a simple slap on the wrist. If it was that serious of a crime I'm sure the penalities would be much worse.
The way I look at it, there's a lot of horrible crap going on in this world right now, so worry about something different than where people are fishing.