Urgent Comments For Haddock Regulations Needed

[Relentless Charters]

Good Evening,

Let me introduce myself, my name is Dave Waldrip, made the CG a career and have owned and operated Relentless Charters since 2001. Anyone who knows me, realizes I have a passion for fishing and the type to reach out to fishery managers when we need to protect our rights to fish with open access and have reasonable bag limits for recreational anglers. Because I don't have enough to do, I took on the job as president of the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Assoc.
The association is not a fishing club but fights for your rights and has members on the HMS advisory panel, recreational advisory panel, RFA and other positions.

Right now we need anglers help, weather you do or not fish for haddock in the Gulf of Maine. NMFS is proposing a 15 fish bag limit at 17" most of the year and the cod will be one at 24" July and August which stinks with lots of cod out east. Some anglers wonder why the jump from 3 to 15 because stocks were in trouble. This is false, the stocks are healthy and the issue was NMFS over estimated the recreational catch by an enormous amount. I can provide data on that later. While we were allowed 3 fish, commercial boats were allowed 50,000 lbs a trip. The stock is healthy and because NMFS says we overfished we had to pay back in 2015. Sorry for the confusion.

I am respectfully requesting anglers go to the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Assoc Fisher Comment Page and scroll down copying the letter which you may edit at will and open the comment link and paste. Comments are due by March 18th and appreciate everyones, help. If anyone has any questions, please email me at captdave@relentlesscharters.com

Respectfully,

Capt Dave