FISHERMEN/Fridays Fishing Report.

Capt. Ron,

Agree with your post. What I fail to understand in fisheries management is their willingness in certain stocks to protect the spawn and unwillingness in others to do the same. Black sea bass in terms of availability to harvest timing wise are close to summer flounder. With BSB the possession limits fluctuates and they're closed in September but the "inshore" fishing period is between May and late August with BSB and May 22nd through Sept 19th this year with summer flounder. Opening the summer flounder fishery on October 8th would result in the same fiasco as opening BSB on October 8th. Majority of harvestable fish are already offshore and for all practical purposes outside the range of most recreational anglers.

With striped bass, regulations were changed to protect younger age classes, harvest the middle age groups and protect the large breeders. Personally I agree with those changes, I know some don't but the regulations are intended to protect juvenile groups, promote and protect large breeders and harvest the middle age classes through a slot. Black fish have similar regulations with the primary spawn closed to fishing from May through July.

BSB spawn through July. Most larger fish caught early in the season are loaded with eggs. The amount of eggs killed is ridiculous, in the trillions. Why not close the season through June so these fish can drop their eggs and open it from July through the end of the year so fish can be harvested during the summer months before migrating back out east and south. It'd be healthier for the fishery and give recreational anglers an opportunity to harvest larger fish throughout the summer months while accessible to inshore anglers.

Look at the attached chart and the yellow line illustrating recruitment. Recruitment has dropped, per fisheries management's statistics, from over 140 million fish in 2012 to less than 20 million in 2018. The regulations mandate the harvest of the spawning stock before they drop their eggs and in my opinion any fishery with that ideology will ultimately cause the stocks decline and regulations to be tightened in later years. Makes no sense. Recruitment is a leading indicator of what the future holds in store for any stock. Any stock with poor recruitment won't survive with the pressure fisheries world wide have on them these days, especially ones harvested year round.

With BSB recruitment went up, spawning stock went up. Recruitment has since fallen off the cliff, why would anyone think the spawning stock won't follow suit. Maybe this is the definition under Magnuson of Maximum Sustainable Yield but it make zero sense imposing regulations with the effects of depleting the spawning stock and destroying recruitment levels. The same thing is happening, as I've repeatedly posted, with the summer founder stock and eventually those regulations will catch up with the fishery and lead to tighter regulations unless something is done to change them.

[tautog]

Black sea bass actually change sex from female to male as they age, so the keeper sized fish are almost all male. If anything we should be harvesting more at smaller size to stimulate spawning. Captain Monty Hawkins has done interesting work that indicates that a smaller size limit and larger bag limit maximizes sea bass spawning.

You're correct. BSB are what's known as protogynous hermaphrodites, which means they start life as a female and then change sex to become males when they reach 2 - 5 years of age. All knuckleheads which are larger and older age class fish are dominant males.

If you fish for BSB in the spring early summer, check the fish you fillet. I have for some 30 or more years and a vast majority of them are egg laden females.

I'm familiar with some of Monty Hawkin's work and reputation and will look up his research on BSB and what you mentioned. But for now, my question would be based on the known that almost all younger age BSB are females, how would harvesting smaller fish at a higher rate maximize spawning? Wouldn't we in fact be killing more mature / immature females and killing more eggs?

[tautog]

Not enough fish are switching quickly enough. Females die of old age without making the necessary transition. The switch is primarily activated by population pressures. Until the size limits were raised, there were no such thing as 12 inch plus females. Virtually every fish over 10 inches was male and spawning started earlier.