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Originally Posted by sportfishingusa
After seeing all the weigh ins and the size of the sharks we saw last season.. hm... something is going on.. something has to happen..
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That is the fault of the tournament rules. Put minimums on the size either length or weight. I prefer the length myself even though no tournaments currently do that in NJ. At least the SJ has a 200lb minimum weight. I think there has to be penalities too. Negative points for taking shark that is 10% below target weight. That should cover misjudging on length weight charts.
Keeping sharks for the "table" that never made it to the weigh station is the biggest crime during these tournaments. Last year at the SJ. I saw at least 7-8 makos that looked like they would not have even made the 100lb mark, but it is legal to keep a 54 inch fish so what can be said to these people.
They are closing our seabass fishery, where the species changes from female to male at or about our size limit, but they allow baby makos and other species to be killed. Shark fishing to me is more about the challenge of getting a big fish. I have and had no problem releasing every mako brought to the boat this year, because i did not get one at that two hundred pound mark. It was especially hard on last overnighter of year when sword rod went off and ended up being a mako in the 125-130 class. with the tuna season a bust once again I was thinking how good those mako steaks would taste in the middle of the winter, but instead practiced with ARC dehooker to retrieve the hook and tagged and let it go.
I
do not think that these tournaments have caused the issue, just making a point of how they could modify rules.
Only thing that people will argue is at times this might result in no makos being caught over 200lbs like it did in the SJ two years ago, but that should show people that something needs to be done to stop the finning and other BS.
