It’s important that we stand up for the fish… if we don’t… there will be no fish to catch. That’s why when I hear political leaders talk about taking fish because “This is about states’ rights,” rather than saying, “It’s about the fish,” it sets off alarms for me. I am not a fisheries manager, […]
Anglers should be stoked about this week’s Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council Meeting, and focused on making this sort of thing a requirement After emerging from four days of mind-numbing meetings, I’m leaving Virginia with my chest puffed out and my head held high. Why? Because in the often dim world of fishery management, we […]
Last month I wrote about the need for fishing sectors to come together to fend off some of the larger threats facing all fisheries: resource decline, loss of access, and all of the other anthropogenic and physical phenomena that are making fish harder to catch. These affect everyone in the fishing industry, whether recreational, commercial, […]
To date, salt water fishery management is largely about dead fish. We worry about fishing mortality. We try to figure out how many fish can be landed without doing long-term harm to the stock. What we don’t think about very often is how many fish we should leave alive in the water to make the […]
Final action on the Unmanaged Forage Amendment on Monday! This is your last chance to weigh in Just about everyone who’s been out to the 30-fathom line this year has seen it. A ton of really small mackerel/tuna-like fish schooling in dense concentrations and great numbers. A couple of weeks ago, we started to see […]
Our coastal estuaries are about to get inundated as our most prolific salmon, fall Chinook, begin their journey home to finish out their lifecycle. With that inundation comes a plethora of invasives, including, if not especially, humans. Even though sport-angling boats will soon number in the thousands at the Buoy 10 fishery, our sport take […]
This spring NOAA Fisheries released two reports that signal encouraging progress for fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. The 2015 Status of the Stocks and Fisheries Economics in the U. S.: 2014 both documented the continuing success of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Until fairly recently, however, many Gulf fisheries were overfished or subject to overfishing and […]
Bass with bunker. Photo by Capt. John McMurray. Are managers seriously thinking about increasing the menhaden quota again? I’m not gonna waste any space here this time talking about all the benefits of recent menhaden concentrations. Not just because I’ve already done that here, but really, anyone who fishes at all gets it. Massive schools […]
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