Tell me it's not rigged!

So the triggerfish season for 2017 is closed to recreational fishermen. I was at Beau Rivage recently and in their new-menu seafood restaurant, guess what item is featured ALL-THROUGH their menu? Right! Gulf Triggerfish! Fried, Broiled, seafood salad - they feature triggerfish and it's supposedly so rare that recreational fishermen can't possess ANY! How can this be if the system for regulating commercial fishermen has any integrity? You go in Publix and they sell red snapper in the seafood department, or Red Lobster where they serve red snapper, which means they have to have a ready supply. How is this possible, again, since recreational fishermen are limited to a mini-season because of "over-fishing" by recreational guys? Are these species really threatened from overfishing? Or are the interests of commercial fishermen being protected to the detriment of recreational guys?

So what's really happening here? Are law enforcement guys giving commercial fishermen a pass on their limits and their seasons? Are commercial guys just using the commercial fishing licenses of friends and family to to make it where they virtually have no limit?

If fish stocks are endangered, how can they be on the menus at restaurants all across the country? Or is it as I suspect, that they're (i.e. triggerfish and red snapper) not endangered at all and the seasons and limits are a total fraud?

I suppose that I'm just venting because in this season of emphasizing business interests, it's highly unlikely that anything will be done about what appears to me to be an injustice done to the recreational fisherman. So what if they allow an increase in the number of king mackerel that a recreational fisherman can keep, if none are being caught? The cat food industry is thriving from cheap king mackerel prices.

Follow the money trail. The people making the rules are probably getting some sort of benefit from the commercial/charter fishing lobby. Its amazing what filet mignon, fine wine and free fishing trips can get you. This is pure speculation but one can only assume this is this case. The snapper check system totally disproves their "scientific guess" of the red snapper harvest that they use as the basis for setting the recreational season yet they choose to ignore factual data. It is the "Golden Rule". He who has the most gold makes the rule.

According to the number of red snapper caught on the head boats that are tossed back in because you can't keep them, there isn't a shortage of them. Once they are tossed back, most of them die or become shark bait. I haven't seen that many triggerfish caught off of the head boats but it used to be fun to catch a few nice ones once in a while. I hope the Feds know what they are doing but I sometime wonder.

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Originally Posted by flyguy

According to the number of red snapper caught on the head boats that are tossed back in because you can't keep them, there isn't a shortage of them. Once they are tossed back, most of them die or become shark bait.

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Flipper will follow a head boat to a reef or two, but not for long, he gets full really fast. A 14 inch red snapper is just the right size for him.

There is NO WAY there is a shortage of Red Snapper !! If anything they need to be thinned out We fished the rigs at Fort Morgan twice in October and had to leave over half of them because we could not keep the red snapper from biting There were hundreds of 4-8 lb fish on the rigs no more than 2-3 miles out Caught some over 15 lbs Has to be catering to the commercial fishing industry

Federal fishing regulations are lumped into the Department of Commerce, hence the bias towards commercial fishing interests.
Our current senator is well aware of the travesty this government bureaucracy has created and hopefully he will wield enough influence with the incoming administration to improve oversight of the resource.
They are all about less government regulations, so the time may be fast approaching when the states can gain more control over the coastal water fishing?

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Originally Posted by Pier#r

Our current senator is well aware of the travesty this government bureaucracy has created and hopefully he will wield enough influence with the incoming administration to improve oversight of the resource.
They are all about less government regulations, so the time may be fast approaching when the states can gain more control over the coastal water fishing?

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For the record, I'm FOR increased regulations on commercial fishermen. I think that gill-netting should be outlawed, for example. If FEWER regulations become the trend, I think that recreational fishermen can kiss mackerel fishing goodbye, in my opinion.

I'm curious, though, about what my fellow recreational fishermen think about being shut out of a resource like this? Do you all believe in deregulating the commercial fishing industry so that they can maximize their profits, even if it means that there's a depletion of fish stocks? Are you okay with red snapper and triggerfish, being reserved for ONLY commercial fishing? Because we're nearly there now. Are you all fine with making commercial limits more liberal so that those companies can make more money?

So what about it? Do you all support deregulation of the fishing business, while protecting their interests against recreational fishermen by denying recreational fishermen access to it?

One more question: Does anybody think that the status quo is a bureaucratic SNAFU, as opposed to a deliberate tilting of the playing field BY politicians in favor of commercial groups that "lobby" (bribe) them?

[Fred mounts soapbox...]

To me the two biggest problems are:

1. They've got reef fish mixed in with "highly migratory" fish in the regulations. There is no way that logical reef fish regulations can be made that apply to the entire GoM.

2. They are treating our reef fish as a "natural" resource when the reefs are artificial, placed there at significant cost by sporting interests. Without those artificial reefs the red snapper population in soft bottom areas (most of offshore Alabama) would be negligible.

Our reef fish are more like a free range fish farm.

Somebody needs to get a case in front of a sympathetic judge. There is no way that the situation is "equitable" and "equity" matters in law.

Man do i get so heated and the only reason we aren't out there protesting is because we need to get organized, so we need 20,000 people on floats with signs and news cameras

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Originally Posted by DAN S II

There is NO WAY there is a shortage of Red Snapper !! If anything they need to be thinned out We fished the rigs at Fort Morgan twice in October and had to leave over half of them because we could not keep the red snapper from biting There were hundreds of 4-8 lb fish on the rigs no more than 2-3 miles out Caught some over 15 lbs Has to be catering to the commercial fishing industry

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It was the same way when I fished the rigs off of Port Aransas in October. The red snapper were a nuisance. 15-20 red snapper per 1 of any other fish species, and that's being conservative on the red snapper side. Most of the day was spent unhooking and releasing red snapper.