The good news is we should be getting to keep some wreckfish, may have 240ft and deeper opened back up,
and dolphin, wahoo, cobia, king and spanish bag limits aren’t going down.
Dolphin will get a 20" minimum in SC.
The ACL’s for species (dolphin, wahoo, kings included) have been set, and if they think we’ve exceeded an ACL, they’ll shut fishing down for the particular species as they did for black sea bass recently.
SAFMC also wants to group fish they have very little clue about together in order to manage them. They were considering removing them from the management complex, but Pew will never waste a potential crisis if there’s a species that can be found that’ll shut some areas down or make some fishermen desperate for radical forms of management. (sorry… I’m getting off track, aren’t I?)
I will highlight</font id=“red”> what you may care about since this is lengthy reading.
Annual Catch Limits, Removal of Deepwater Closure and Other Measures Approved by Council for Federally Managed Fisheries in South Atlantic
Members of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council met in a special one-day session to review and approve measures to set Annual Catch Limits (in pounds or numbers of fish) for several popular species, including dolphin (mahi mahi), wahoo, cobia, king and Spanish mackerel, and species in the Snapper Grouper management complex. Allocations between commercial and recreational fishermen were also addressed. Under the amended Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, catch limits must be implemented by the end of 2011 that will prevent overfishing from occurring. The limits are based on recommendations by the Councils Scientific and Statistical Committee. Accountability Measures (AMs), such as specification of catch targets, in-season regulation changes, post-season regulations that may include p
How is this good news? They can close a fishery down to keep us under there number. Just like closing dolphin fishing for the month of may and june. Cobia closed the same months. Where is the recreation number coming from. Bingo they can come up with what ever number they want. This is just away for them to get around not being able to change the limits!
How is this good news? They can close a fishery down to keep us under there number. Just like closing dolphin fishing for the month of may and june. Cobia closed the same months. Where is the recreation number coming from. Bingo they can come up with what ever number they want. This is just away for them to get around not being able to change the limits!
I called Fat Cat when I read this and said the same thing. The government fishing season is typically from June to June. If we over fish one year, we will miss the beginning of the next year for most species of concern.
I said it three years ago. There may not be a change in trip limits, but even worse. There will be an arbitrary limit opened and closed by voodoo science and guesstimates.
Again, I have never been asked how many fish or how many pounds of fish I have in the box. The numbers will be “made up” from the “best available data”. This is not good news at all.
This will of course lead to griping about such issues from the recreational sector and the only way out in the end will be vessel monitoring, video catching, recreational log books and other gastapo measures that we will have to pay for and bear the burden of to enjoy our right to fish. F’ d up 4 sure.
This is bad news for Cobia fisherman in Beaufort County. If they reload the quotas in June each year, the May Cobia Run will be essentially shut down. If it starts in June, then everyone on the east coast will get a chance to catch cobia and max out the quota before they even arrive inshore in Beaufort County in May. The peak of Cobia season will be catch and release until June each year.
This is bad news for Cobia fisherman in Beaufort County. If they reload the quotas in June each year, the May Cobia Run will be essentially shut down. If it starts in June, then everyone on the east coast will get a chance to catch cobia and max out the quota before they even arrive inshore in Beaufort County in May. The peak of Cobia season will be catch and release until June each year.
This Sux.
Absolutely true. This will start a “race” if you will to get what’s yours. Since we are in the middle of the run, geographically speaking, we get screwed. Not that bad south of us, unless the quota fills real early. Not that bad north of us unless the fish move up faster. Right in the middle is no good.
If vessel monitoring or mandatory catch reporting does not come about we will end up with seasons. Some smaller areas like divided by state lines or Lat/Lon. You can catch such and such between these 2 points for these 6 weeks. Good thing we have a few lawyers around here to keep all this straight.
I see a new career in Maritime Law. Phin can sell you his bottom rigs and teach you how to use them while telling you if you can keep the fish you just caught. I’ll take a 10% cut.
I don’t think I understand some of the responses here.
This is good news relative to what we have been dealing with and what was threatened. It is always good news relative to what’s threatened. This is nothing new.
Some of you are taking the thread title too literally. Guess what though, it takes some sort of title like that for people to read it and give a crap.
It’s like I’m being called out or something above.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I am burnt out with all of this. If it isn’t dealing with all the corruption and slight of hand and lying, it’s all the ignorant people who blindly defend and approve of evil stuff being done to them with their own money. If it isn’t either of those, it’s arguing with people who are basically in the same boat as me about what to do about it and having to somehow prove myself or my opinions only to be called long-winded and/or mocked for my passion or perhaps just my thouroughness. I can’t win. We can’t win.
And my livelihood doesn’t even depend on it. I only got involved to begin with because my favorite type of fishing was under threat of total shut down. I ultimately have swallowed a whole lot of stuff that I really hate and worst of all I hear of people who just don’t even care about the laws anymore since they aren’t based on legit reasoning, muchless science. Everything is a crisis, and we’re all guilty until proven innocent. Salty grit rubbed into our wounds harder and deeper the more involved we get in any of these fishery issues.
All I do now is post information.
Nobody wants to hear “conspiracy theories.”
Nobody wants to read “dissertations.”
Nobody wants to do what they say they’ll do.
It’s every man for himself or something around here. We find out an MPA’s coming in where they promised it wouldn’t and then go limit out on scamp grouper as many times as possible on the same danged reef that’ll be shut down and post the pics on here. We find out ARS will be closed, so we give snapper numbers to everybody we possibly can and tell everyb
Phin, keep up the good fight…you have a fan in me and have caused me to begin educating myself on these issues and supporting those who feel the way I feel and think the whole thing smells rotten…yours is an unpopular and thankless fight, please keep it up…
Phin, keep up the good fight…you have a fan in me and have caused me to begin educating myself on these issues and supporting those who feel the way I feel and think the whole thing smells rotten…yours is an unpopular and thankless fight, please keep it up…
There are a lot of people who have given up a lot more than I have or could.
You are right- it is thankless.
We don’t want to be thanked though. We just want healthy fisheries management and healthy recreation.
I get msgs pretty often asking about what’s legal and what’s not. I cannot even answer the questions without looking at the regs.
It isn’t fun anymore, and we all know that much of the management that’s occuring is harming rather than helping the fisheries.
The stuff that needs serious changes in regulation is the stuff that is like a free for all in foreign countries. Compare how vulnerable bluefins, bigeyes and yellowfins are globally compared to our local snapper-grouper. We have had solid regs in place on bottom species for over 20 years now, and economics is driving local commercials out. Yet, here are the “enviros” pushing for catch shares, which will “save” some commercial fisheries and fighting against efforts to get better science to use the money instead for catch shares campaigns. You really think they’re acting on the behalf of the fish???
Think about it.
It’s about MONEY and POLITICS.
Has absolutely nothing to do with FISH. Look at the professional backgrounds of all the upper level Pew, EDF, et al staffs. The exception to the rule with them is somebody having scientific training or education in their backgrounds. It’s all public relations and marketing… not the environment.
This is bad news for Cobia fisherman in Beaufort County. If they reload the quotas in June each year, the May Cobia Run will be essentially shut down. If it starts in June, then everyone on the east coast will get a chance to catch cobia and max out the quota before they even arrive inshore in Beaufort County in May. The peak of Cobia season will be catch and release until June each year.
This Sux.
If it wasn’t for SCDNR’s pleas to the council and proving to them that the SC population is separate then we’d be in worse shape. You would be looking at like a one per boat cobia limit or seasonal closures out of the box. The seasonal closure would have been during spawning. Guess when that is…
So disaster was averted the only way it could when they refused to change the fishing year, then we were stuck with everyone from here to the east side of the keys hoping they don’t feel like we’ve exceeded the ACL. If you were in FL, wouldn’t you want the fishing year to end just as the SC guys started wearing them out and maxing the whole region’s numbers out? Makes perfect sense that FL would fight the fishing year being changed from ending right when we catch 80% of ours if they catch them more year-round there.
Our one recreational rep from SC, Tom Swatzel, did the best he could do with the others on the council. I don’t want to think about what would happen if he wasn’t on there for us. The council vote was split on the fishing year as well as the other stuff, as the big ones always are. That’s what happens when you lump together so many states and have very few people able to get to meetings and break it down for the swing votes on the council who are essentially people who just want to keep getting put back on the council instead of being labeled as a system buc
This is bad news for Cobia fisherman in Beaufort County. If they reload the quotas in June each year, the May Cobia Run will be essentially shut down. If it starts in June, then everyone on the east coast will get a chance to catch cobia and max out the quota before they even arrive inshore in Beaufort County in May. The peak of Cobia season will be catch and release until June each year.
This Sux.
If it wasn’t for SCDNR’s pleas to the council and proving to them that the SC population is separate then we’d be in worse shape. You would be looking at like a one per boat cobia limit or seasonal closures out of the box. The seasonal closure would have been during spawning. Guess when that is…
So disaster was averted the only way it could when they refused to change the fishing year, then we were stuck with everyone from here to the east side of the keys hoping they don’t feel like we’ve exceeded the ACL. If you were in FL, wouldn’t you want the fishing year to end just as the SC guys started wearing them out and maxing the whole region’s numbers out? Makes perfect sense that FL would fight the fishing year being changed from ending right when we catch 80% of ours if they catch them more year-round there.
Our one recreational rep from SC, Tom Swatzel, did the best he could do with the others on the council. I don’t want to think about what would happen if he wasn’t on there for us. The council vote was split on the fishing year as well as the other stuff, as the big ones always are. That’s what happens when you lump together so many states and have very few people able to get to meetings and break it down for the swing votes on the council who are essentially people who just want to keep getting put back on the c
Phin- I really just hoped you had a different read on how I felt. I was hoping you could tell me why this was as you say,“some good news”.
We all know you fight the good fight, so stop playing the marter. I wanted to open a discussion on what my view of it was and you could express yours.
So, for real, what is the good news as you see it?
Good news is that cobia isn’t going to have a seasonal spawning closure of April-June or bag limit reduction to one per boat. Both of those were on the table and seriously considered.
Also, wahoo was looked at for a bag limit reduction to simply err on the side of caution (they don’t have good science on any of these fish, as you know). Wahoo bag limit reductions would have been a big deal. All of these things are happening in order to meet the “end overfishing” mandate. So when we get regs for a species staying the same and no absolutely needless season closures, e.g. scamp grouper, on species then that’s good news.
What do you expect these people to do? High five one another and admit they’ve restored a lot of fish stocks to good levels? This is a federal bureaucracy we’re talking about, and there are political orgs and charitible orgs that absolutely thrive off there being some sort of crisis threatening something. They have the law, courts, administration, and formerly Congress on their sides. Money is green- not blue or red… or R or D. Everybody who comments about the situation to politically powerful or influential individuals has been making a difference. You may not think you’ve done much, but knowing what is going on like Courtland and Carl are talking about here is a sign that the people who formerly would never believe there’s anything wrong with the system are getting the message. We have to keep it up.
I would rather have a 1 per person limit than HOPE that the season is not closed when we catch 80% of our fish. I know there is no real answer with so many states and different fisheries involved. It just seems as though we are getting the worst of this bill when it comes to South Carolina Cobia.
I agree except my suggestion was to simply increase the min. length to like 37 or 38 inches.
On the SC getting the worst end of the stick- we got railed hard by the FL and GA people right as we were petitioning against the 98-240ft closure even when the closure line was going to be around Savannah. People want to blame the anglers from the other states, but the blame isn’t deserved. Everybody is just trying to look out for number one- themselves. Lumping the 4 states together has hurt a lot of things like this. The black seabass show signs that they are two separate fisheries between FL and the rest of the area also. A lot of the FL data has been used while NC data was thrown out. Voila: sea bass look like they’re still in trouble. Very simple things are done to skew the management of each species by agency employees, and the other good news is that some of them are starting to get shuffled around into other offices or have their butts chewed because of Congress listening to us and starting to dig around. Tim Scott and Jeff Duncan have been doing a lot for us as first termers up there. Joe Wilson also has been interested, but they can only do so much. Our issue just doesn’t warrant enough to be made a priority right now, but it looks like we’re improving in that regard. Our governor is going to hear and see more before she gets out of the mansion as well. Our Senators have also been listening and educating themselves, and our state legislators have been helping us. T
Thanks for the response. Again we all know you, and many others, are fighting for us.
At the last meeting in Pooler I spoke on record after the PEW puppet spoke. I went through some basic expenditures that my little foray in recreational fishing puts into the LOCAL economy. Just rough #'s are about 25K a year.
This year I am well below that average. Not because of funds, but moreso, fish. It is not worth burning the fuel. My boat is in Geaorgetown getting a mini retrofit. It may hit the market after that, but maybe not. Most likely it will sit on my trailer while I spend my $$$ elsewhere. A few days in Cape Cod for tuna. A week in Panama then Hatteras for bluefin. I will still spend the $$$, most likely not in my own backyard. It’s sad.
