Does anyone have any idea how many recreational boats are bottomfishing in federal waters out of SC?
Guess, like SAFMC does!
I’m confident it’s NMFS that collects such data (MRIP program??), not SAFMC.
Freefish, that’s a difficult question to answer. There must be at least a couple of thousand boats statewide that bottom fish, but maybe they only go once or twice a year. Maybe most of them are trolliing, and then maybe fish some bottom areas for an hour or two on the way in. Some will fish artificial reefs as opposed to going all the way to the ledge. Lots of “maybes” in there.
Based on recreational landings this year (see link below), it appears bottom fishing by recreationals this year has been very light. For example, only 6% of the recreational quota for scamp has been landed. Black sea bass is at 15%. Vermillion is at 10%. Amberjack is at 0% (big surprise, huh?).
http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sustainable_fisheries/acl_monitoring/recreational_sa/index.html
Sea Hunt 207CC,Yam 150
www.abfishcharters.com
I would say half as many as 5 yrs ago…the times i have been out you may see 2-3 boats max…
Thanks for the response guys. It does not seem like there are all that many avid offshore recreational bottom fishermen. We should be able to coordinate efforts to collect better data for stock assessments. The new SAFMC chairman stated that one of his goals is better cooperation better fishermen and fishery managers. We should use this opportunity to offer ideas like a program for tagging illegal fish to learn more about discard mortality rates, movement, and abundance.
quote:I would agree with that. I think you have guys who try it 2-3 times a year, to guys who go dozens of times in a year. There are also those who troll in the spring and may switch over to bottom fishing when the pelagic bite slows down. Also, there are a lot of people who prefer to dive than bottom fish, but even some of us fish a little bit between dives. It's really hard to count and quantify how much bottom fishing really happens out there.
Originally posted by freefish7It does not seem like there are all that many avid offshore recreational bottom fishermen.
But compared to places like Florida, it’s probably pretty slim. When coming out of an inlet in Florida, you can usually see 50+ boats within site of the inlet anchored up, bottom fishing, and there are inlets all up and down the coast. This was the case every time we broke through Boynton or Lake Worth Inlet where most bottom fishing happens within 3 miles of the shoreline.
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But compared to places like Florida, it's probably pretty slim.
I reckon so. South Carolina has what, maybe 200 total miles of coast line? Florida has over 1,800 miles of coast line. SC is not a big offshore fishing tourist destination, Florida has millions of people a year coming just to fish.
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This was the case every time we broke through Boynton or Lake Worth Inlet where most bottom fishing happens within 3 miles of the shoreline.
The continental shelf drops sharply there. Get out farther than 3 miles on the east coast and it’s hard to bottom fish in 1,000’ of water so everyone fishes close to shore. The geography concentrates the fishermen. On the west coast most bottom fishing is between 20 and 80 miles offshore, and there is over 1,000 miles of west coast FL shoreline. Roughly 10 times the entire state of SC. 80 miles out on the west coast of FL only puts you in 100’ of water. 80 miles out on the east coast puts you across the stream and past the Bahama banks. They have to stay close to shore to bottom fish on the east coast or they couldn’t even reach the bottom. In 1977 and 1978 I was running a 48’ Hatteras charter boat out of the Ft. Lauderdale Mariott, and the fishing sucked even then. I could catch more and better fish right here in Savannah, but we didn’t get the tourist money in Savannah then. We had to fish where the money was, not where the fish were.
One thing I agree with, there is probably only 1/4 of the people fishing offshore now in SC and Georgia as there were 10 years ago. The price of fuel, the tight regulations, the economy and the price of offshore boats has turned many offshore fis
I can remember when there were 5 head boats working daily out of Charleston. Back then most of the sport boats were set up for king mac & bottom fishing. regulated out of business.
Yes, Cracker. Another point is accessibility. You can fish many more days a year when you only have to go 2 miles offshore. Usually in SC, if someone see’s a small craft advisory, they just cancel and plan for another day. It’s not worth running 40 miles in crappy weather. What I saw a lot of in South Florida was, “Hey, let’s just put our nose out there and see what happens”. In the keys, I would be shocked if you couldn’t fish 250 days a year. And as you mention the geography… Not only does it put a lot of fishermen close together, it creates a natural funnel that funnels a lot of fish in close proximity to highly populated areas that are well known and heavily fished. It becomes a death trap for fish from at least Port St Lucie and south. Heck, you don’t even really need a GPS out of Boynton. People would say, “Hey we caught yellowtail today in 40’ just out in front of the Ritz Carlton”. I would say probably only 10-15% of the center consoles in my marina actually had radar.
Check out this graphic of Gag grouper which were tagged by DNR in South Carolina (the circles) and where they were recaptured (the squares). You can kind of see the natural choke point which seems to start to aggregate around Sebastian Inlet to about Lake Worth.
quote:Yes, but I guess what I am saying is that I would think that the density of fishermen is even higher per mile of coastline. Most of us probably name all of the marinas in Charleston. The ICW is littered with marinas in South Florida. Heck, Boynton Inlet is a ditch and I would speculate that more bottom fishing happens out of that inlet than Charleston.
Originally posted by Cracker Larryquote:
But compared to places like Florida, it's probably pretty slim.
I reckon so. South Carolina has what, maybe 200 total miles of coast line? Florida has over 1,800 miles of coast line. SC is not a big offshore fishing tourist destination, Florida has millions of people a year coming just to fish.
Also, I should have said “East Coast Florida”. That’s really what I was referring to.
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I can remember when there were 5 head boats working daily out of Charleston.
I can remember when there were 5 head boats and 25 charter boats working out of Savannah too. Now I doubt there is more than 5 full time charter boats and no head boats. There used to be hundreds of weekend warriors, now there is maybe a dozen on any given weekend. The economy and regulations are keeping people off the water. Fishing offshore today is for the fairly affluent with disposable income and there aren’t many.
As example, we just made a simple and short trip in the Gulf on Saturday. The 27’ boat cost over $100,000. It cost $800 to fill up the gas tanks. It cost $150 for bait and ice. We probably had $5,000 or more in tackle aboard, another $3K in life raft, EPIRBS and other safety equipment. Our gag grouper limit was 8 fish. Just counting gas and bait it cost over $100 a fish, not figuring in the boat, gear, insurance, storage or dockage, and other costs. In reality it probably cost $1,000 a fish, or more. How many people can do that now? Today’s economy is not conducive to over fishing.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
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Yes, but I guess what I am saying is that I would think that the density of fishermen is even higher per mile of coastline.
I agree with you completely on the southeast coast of FL, too many people fishing too little bottom area. But on the west coast the fishermen are spread out over 100 miles of bottom and 800 miles of coastline and the population is not so dense either.
In any case, I sure don’t know the numbers of people fishing off our coast today, but I sure know that it’s not nearly as many now as did 20 years ago, even though we have more people. And the ones who do it now generally have more money than experience and don’t catch as many fish either 
Some folks excluded of course.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
quote:Agreed. Sorry, I had east coast in my head while typing. I think that South Florida and the keys is just a beast of it's own. I believe they still have a pretty good fishery in N. Florida as well. That's also why you have such better fishing in the Gulf too! I honestly don't think there is any hope for South Florida when it comes to most bottom fish species. It's all about the geography down there...
Originally posted by Cracker Larryquote:
Yes, but I guess what I am saying is that I would think that the density of fishermen is even higher per mile of coastline.
I agree with you completely on the southeast coast of FL, too many people fishing too little bottom area. But on the west coast the fishermen are spread out over 100 miles of bottom and 800 miles of coastline and the population is not so dense either.
In any case, I sure don’t know the numbers of people fishing off our coasts, but I sure know that not nearly as many people do it now as did 20 years ago, even though we have more people. And the ones who do it generally have more money than experience and don’t catch as many fish either:smiley: Some folks excluded of course.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
I think that is a major source of the problems in our fisheries management. Fisheries managers try to apply what they learn in South Florida and the keys to the rest of the ocean and it isn’t even close to being the same.
There has been some talk about managing southeast Florida and the keys separate from the Gulf and South Atlantic. Would you guys support that?
HELL YES!!!
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Originally posted by Cracker Larry ...I sure know that it's not nearly as many now as did 20 years ago, even though we have more people. And the ones who do it now generally have more money than experience and don't catch as many fish either :smiley: Some folks excluded of course.
I kind of assumed that there would be more people because of technology and the potential for a safer adventure. I’m one of those that didn’t grow up fishing but have fallen in love with it as an adult. I choose to afford it and only go deep a few times per year, but thought if I could do it, plenty of others could. That’s why I assumed it was likely to be more now than historically.
BG
quote:Of course, but that is a very broad implication. What does it mean to "manage them separately"? That means a lot of different things to different people.
Originally posted by freefish7There has been some talk about managing southeast Florida and the keys separate from the Gulf and South Atlantic. Would you guys support that?
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I kind of assumed that there would be more people because of technology and the potential for a safer adventure.
30 years ago wasn’t exactly the dark ages We had radar, color fish finders, VHF and SSB radios, EPIRBS and plotters back then too 
We had LORAN C instead of GPS, but it was accurate and worked very well. I miss LORAN, not sure why the feds ever shut that system down.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
quote:Why miss it? Most GPS can still display LORAN. You can pretend that it's still working even though the underlying technology is different. Many people still use it.
Originally posted by Cracker Larry[quote]I miss LORAN, not sure why the feds ever shut that system down.
My guess is that it was decommissioned because the expense of maintaining the towers weren’t worth the cost when there was a better\more accurate system out there.
That being said, I thought I remembered the government talking about re-instating LORAN as a backup to GPS.
quote:
Originally posted by Cracker Larry 30 years ago wasn't exactly the dark ages :smiley: We had radar, color fish finders, VHF and SSB radios, EPIRBS and plotters back then too :wink:
Did the average boater have a Loran system? I was 5, another assumption had me putting iPod’s and common-man GPS’s in the same part of the technology timeline.
I’m positive you know what you’re talking about, I’ve studied your stories carefully to take away any knowledge possible.
BG