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Originally Posted by PBangler
Kensdock, the same could be said for you.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ATLANTIC STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION WEAKFISH MANAGEMENT BOARD - August 19, 2009
DR. DANIEL:
“My whole career has been focused in on weakfish and now we’ve made a big circle. I do want to say a couple of things from the North Carolina perspective.”
“I do have to say I do have a great amount of concern. A lot of you around this table recall the proposal to close the EEZ to weakfish harvest back in the mid-nineties. We vigorously opposed that suggestion because of the multi-species nature of the fisheries off North Carolina and I think some of the other states as well.”
“The sink net fleet will still be operating in the same areas at the same time catching the same fish. They’re just going to have to discard all the weakfish.”
“… but there are also going to be some inside fisheries as well as gillnet fisheries that can have very high quantities of bycatch of weakfish unknowingly.
The last example I’ll give you is the Valentine’s Day Fishery back in 2002, I believe, when a group of about four or five sink net boats went about 30 miles offshore in 360 feet of water, fishing a large-mesh, six-inch gill net for large bluefish, and they all rounded off their boats with tens of thousands of pounds of eight- to fifteen-pound gray trout; very unexpected, unavoidable.
Those fish were all dead …”
MR. O’REILLY
"Given that, I’m going to spend just a minute here, if you don’t mind, but on the moratorium idea I clearly remember in 1991 and the proposal of the technical committee to the management board was as long as you remove all the gear out of the water and do regional blocks of having gear out of the water a moratorium will be very effective."
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Kensdock,
Your idea of simply a moratorium was not going to get us much in the way of commercial reductions of dead fish as opposed to what they voted for. Unlike other recreational anglers who just believed what you had to say, I did my own research and reached a different conclusion. One that was more in alignment with the RFA's points.
Time to move on, this has already been decided for now and there are a ton of important issues that need our attention today.
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I totally disagree! That type of situation is very much avoidable. I am sure all the weakfish that where caught that trip where sold at the market. Here in Cape May co. NJ there was a dramatic drop in weakfish being caught by recs from 2001-2002. Every guy that fished the traditional weakfish spots during the 2002 season had the same question, what happened to the weakfish?!. Mystery solved at last! The dog fish did not eat! them.The stripers did not eat them! The predation theory is total bull &%@$!
Speckled trout or specs as we call them in Cape May co. NJ did not show up this fall in any numbers for the first time in at lest fifty years. What do you think happened to them?
