Thread: Net boats in the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area

I thought that if anyone were interested in continuing the discussion of net boats we could do that here instead on talking about them on the REPORTS page.

A street musician sets up right outside my business and starts playing his trumpet. The fact that he has a family to feed is not my concern. The fact that it intrudes into my space IS my concern. That's pretty much where I am with commercial net boat fishermen. They can fish all they want to - as long as it's somewhere other than near the recreational fishing pier. I've complained about the netters! It's a long way for enforcement personnel to come to Gulf Shores/Orange Beach to routinely police the area, which is why netters bend the rules a bit or a lot (no one really knows if nobody's policing the area).

Part of my complaint with net-boaters is philosophical. While they may work hard to earn a living, they don't significantly contribute to local economies like recreational fishermen do. The spanish mackerel taken from (figuratively) the shadow of the pier may be sold outside the region, "netting" the local area a loss in value. Ditto with other valuable food fishes that can be netted up, processed and shipped away with no positive result for the local community/area from which the resource was taken with nothing put back.

I think that since this is a nation of laws, legislation must be introduced to protect the recreational fishermen's interests in the local resources. What are net boat fishermen to do? They can turn right out of Mobile Bay and do their fishing elsewhere!

All I know is I was fishing in the surf last year catching whiting pompano red fish and and occasional flounder A Net Boat pulled up 50-75 yards to my left started their net 40-50 yds off the beach and vacuumed up every living thing that swam I did not catch another fish I have fished countless days on the Pier with fantastic Spanish bites only to see them disappear the next morning under the same conditions after the Net Boats worked all night I really thought I was going to have to call the Coast Guard as they could hardly make it back in and were almost sinking with the load they had the next morning A friend of mine followed a Net Boat he saw being pulled down the highway one morning just before daylight with Spanish in the boat almost flopping over the sides to the seafood house only to be strongly asked to leave when he tried to watch them unload Now draw your own conclusions

Originally Posted by kingkiller7255

You do realize they open up diffrent zones for mackerel fisherman to fish right? Thats not saying all of them will follow the law but the majority i know do and also they dont open it up on weekends. Most net fisherman are hard working people that have a family to support. With all that said if you dont support comercial fisherman then stop buying live bait stop buying frozen cigar minnows stop buying frozen pogies stop buying any sort of fishing bait from any store cause guess what? It was caught by the same people catching YOUR spanish mackerel.

I have a Coast Watcher's Certificate from AMR, so I guess the answer would be yes.
I also have nothing against folkses making a living by fishing.
I just believe they could do it somewhere else rather than locally depleting the stocks around the pier.
BTW they are not MY spanish mackerel, nor are they THEIRS. They are OURS and the state could do a better job of managing and regulating a large scale commercial operation going on practically within casting distance of the facility WE have spent over 9 million dollars building.

To the money spent on the pier, which is a fish magnet, I would add the nearshore reefs and the other artificial reefs. Netting has been outlawed in every other US state on the Gulf Coast and that is increasing pressure on us. The millions spent on habitat in this state was not spent to benefit a few dozen netters.

I'm fine with netters making a living, but not with their feeding off the investments made for other purposes.

Thats not saying all of them will follow the law but the majority i know do

So then, how many would you say are violators?
And more importantly, if YOU know they are violators what do YOU do about it?

When I attended the Coast Watchers clinic the Marine Resources officer told us that 75% of the violations they write are for gillnetting infractions.
They spend an inordinate amount of time policing the activities of about 1-5 % of the people on the water.
That's why Coast Watchers was formed (to give enforcement more 'eyes on the water').

Folkses on the pier are eager to see that everyone plays by the rules and regulations and should not tolerate scofflaws whether rec or comm.
http://www.govtech.com/e-government/...p-Program.html
or call 251-476-1256

Originally Posted by Pier#r

When I attended the Coast Watchers clinic the Marine Resources officer told us that 75% of the violations they write are for gillnetting infractions.

That's my contention with the status quo! If gillnetters break the law with regularity, why do they get to keep their licenses? Penalties need to be increased to get lawbreakers off the water. If I break speeding laws in my car, they'll take away my license - Why not make gillnetting penalties PENALIZE perpetrators?
Besides that, why is gillnetting even LEGAL for game fish, given its indiscriminate nature? With today's electronics, it's no great feat to locate schools of fish, even in the dark/dim light and catch almost every one of them!
I get how recreational fishing helps the local economy. I'm at a loss as to how the local economy benefits from a few net-boat fishermen scooping up game fish by the thousands and shipping them out of state or wherever people will pay top-dollar for spanish mackerel, pompano, mullet, flounder, etc. Why does the state allow this abuse of the resource to continue? Or more to the point, why do recreational fishermen stand for it? Gillnetting isn't a Constitutional right, so I'm not understanding why indiscriminate netting is still legal nor why it happens within sight of a pier where fishermen, unlike the gillnetters, are bound to a single location. IF gillnetting is to continue, I'd suggest a zone of two miles from the pier in each direction where gillnetting is not allowed. Additionally, I'd like to see enforcement personnel REGULARLY checking those gillnetters for infractions and their licenses pulled for excessive violations.