striper1

The boat mentioned from BI was repotedly fishing the SW ledge. Technically it is in international waters in which the taking of styripers is prohibited. Most of us have taken striper from the reef, which was illegal.
Do I think he deserves to be chastised, no. But the taking of off shore striper remain illegal.

striper1

I do also believe there should be a grace zone to make areas on the 3 mile line legal.

AlloyToy

Capt. Bruce Peters (mentioned in the article) is a good charter captain. I think he's trying to push the issue that the fleet out of Chatham has been bass fishing these waters for years and nobody cared. Now all of a sudden it's the urgency of the year with Fed's trying to bust as many boats as they can. Yes it is the law without a doubt, but why weren't these guys doing their job in the past too?

JayR

Things could likely have stayed the same had MA not pushed to open the EEZ. It was one of those "out of sight, out of mind" things. When MA tried to open it and pressed the fact that the law was not being enforced it gave management a black eye.
With the failure to open it came a quick and resolved measure to not have the other eye blackened as well....

"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me". EEZ is now off limits and enforced. Sometimes it's better to not open a can of worms. As usual, someone was not satisfied and asked for more and in the end lost something they shouldn't have had to begin with.

I have to laugh at the whole thing. Bottom argument was "we're alreay breaking the law and getting away with it, ya might as well just make it legal". That premise is absurd and a fools errand. The consequences were expected for anyone with a clue.

The captain is wrong..... he broke the law and has no legal standing. There is no point to make as it has already been discussed and ruled upon. Nothing at this point will change except for the amount of cash in his business account as he gets fined.

BTW... I would be hard pressed to believe "most" of us have fished the EEZ. I'll bet it is but a very small fraction of us in reality. I personally know no one that has....

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JayR

International would be outside of the 200 mile limit, wouldn't it? 3 to 200 are federal waters.

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JayR

Could be the nicest guy in the world but if he is bringing paying customers into an illegal situation, it would speak volumes of his character. Were there customers on the boat? Could they be charged as well?

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AlloyToy

There's no doubt, the law is the law, and everyone has to abide by it. My guess is that because he started this campaign against the EEZ areas, that this was an easy grab for the EP's.

Where there's money there's greed, where there's greed there's corruption.

JackC

Federal waters not international. The short story is that many, many recreational fishing groups pushed hard to keep the EZZ closed for many of the reasons mentioned above. I don't know of any national recreational groups that were "for" opening the EZZ. I sat through long discussions on this with the CTDEP. Overall, bass should really become a "game fish" with no commercial landings. They have become the cornerstone of fishing in the Northeast and need to be managed a bit differently than other fish. Of course if you have a MA/RI/NY commercial license you will disagree.

If bass stocks collapse, we will have big trouble in the entire NE marine recreational fishery. The ripple effect would hit the entire boating/angling world in the Northeast in a bad way.

Fisheries managers don't really differentiate between the landings (a dead fish is a dead fish from their perspective). States with a huge population that sport fish and have a requirement for a SW license do manage a bit more to cater to the recreational public. The point here being that my intuition is that when the federal registration becomes reality you will see bass get game fish status.

Nothing against commercial fisherman, just looking at the big picture.

JayR

Jack, please look at the table below and explain to me how removal of commercial landings will make a difference...


It would appear that the recreational sector has increased their annual harvest by 100% within the past decade and the commercial sector harvest has remained relatively the same.

In my very rudimentary view, the recreational sector is solely responsible for the position we are quickly finding ourselves in. That being the surpassing of the F mortality threshold....

Please note the leap in landings starting in 2000 and how it coincides with the F threshold graph.

Seems the commercial landings are having a very small effect and that the recreational take is growing out of control.

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JayR

I fail to see how game-fish status would have any positive effect on the fishery.

2 fish per day per angler at 28" is ludicrous.... Who can possibly eat that much?

Make it one per day at 34" and you'll have all the stripers you want to catch for some time (at least until the rec population grows further).

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