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.

So do you all agree with me that the false narrative of declining red snapper (and likely triggerfish too) is an exercise in protecting price supports? See, the price goes up as long as there's a perception of rarity. Recreational fishermen get cut out of the deal, eliminating competition for the resource.

Essentially this is our government telling us, "If you want to enjoy triggerfish or red snapper, you'll need to get it at a restaurant, because we're not going to allow you to catch and prepare them yourselves." Congress has the obligation to act. I'm not optimistic.

I believe every person who has told me that there's a surplus population of red snapper. The bottom line seems to be if fishermen support more regulation on commercial fishing and LESS regulation on recreational fishermen. More importantly -- What are your representatives in Washington going to do about recreational fishermen having equal access to a shared resource? Senator Shelby could have accomplished
a lot more. I suspect that what he does and what he says are two completely different things. But let's see what he does. My money is on graft/corruption and the influence of lobbyists to win out over the individual outdoor sportsman. I do know this - Time is running out if this is something on Senator Shelby's bucket list!




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Originally Posted by secureone

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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The problem is that recreational fishermen, by definition, fish as a hobby. Most of us hold full time jobs and have functional (or dysfunctional, depending on the person) families and without MONEY to buy politicians, nothing is likely to get done anyway. However, all we can do is all we can do. I say that the best resource is Senator Shelby, despite his record of effectively fence-sitting and the fact that he owns the status-quo. Perhaps he'll respond to the issue of his legacy and how he's remembered in history.

One thing to remember: Recs and commercials get a separate quota per year for each species.
Commercial fishers and buyers must reports all catch and sales, so they have firm numbers on when they meet their quota. They both must send in all catch/purchase data.
Rec. catch is estimated, which is part of the problem. Estimates are just that, estimates. And getting rec. guys to report catch so better estimates can be made has been an up hill battle.

Red Snapper:
No one in fisheries management is arguing that red snapper stocks are declining, quite the opposite. Red snapper is recovering/has recovered and is much more plentiful than 10-20 years ago.
The "problem" is that "estimated" recreational catch quickly exceeds the rec. quota. So you have a very short season.
And the stock estimates, science and regulatory framework are not keeping up with the speed of the stock increase.
So you end up with short seasons/"relatively" low quotas for a fishery that is clearly in good shape.

Doesn't make sense, but that is what the Magnusson/Stephens Fisheries Management Act (law, not regulation) requires.

Back to triggerfish, its regulated the same way, under quotas. Recs and commercials get a seperaete quota per year. Commercial fishers and buyers must reports all catch and sales, so they have firm numbers on when they meet their quota.
But, just like snapper, Rec catch is based on estimates. Current estimates are that rec fisherman caught about twice the rec quota in 2016, so the 2016 season closed and no season for 2017. If commercial guys catch their quota, they close as well. As required by the Magnusson/Stephens Fisheries Management Act.

All that said, triggerfish population estimates (and quotas) are/were based on catch estimates (fisheries dependent data). When circle hooks were mandated, triggerfish catches plummeted. Plug that into stock assessment models and all the sudden the model says "oh shit, triggerfish populations have plummeted". Common sense tells us otherwise. Fisheries independent data may as well. But the science, stock assessments and regulations lag behind. So we end up with what yah got.


So back to the original question:
Why do you see triggerfish on a menu when the recreational season is closed?
Simple: commercial guys have a separate quota, and their season closes when they meet their quota.
Plus the fish may have been frozen for months. (Or it really could be tilapia, because most (not all but most) people cant tell the difference anyway. )
They commercial quotas and recreational quotas are separate, when one is open and/or the other is closed has absolutely nothing to do with each other. Never has.
Kinda like saying "My buddy shot a deer with the bow today, why can't I go shoot a deer with my rifle?" when rifle season isnt open again until next year.



Want things to change?
Stop bitching about NOAA, the regulations, the commercial guys and all the other shit on forums like this. It does nothing.
Call or write your congress and senators and have them change the M/S Act, pass a law that gives the reef fish management in the Gulf to the states and have them appropriate fisheries managers more funding to do more frequent, better and more timely stock assessments and catch estimates.

Want to stop gill-netting in state waters? Same thing: Stop bitching on here and go write your Alabama Ssate congressman/senator and tell them you want it stopped.
Right now.
Stop reading my post and go do it.
Why are you still reading my rant???
Go write.

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Call or write your congress and senators and have them change the M/S Act, pass a law that gives the reef fish management in the Gulf to the states and have them appropriate fisheries managers more funding to do more frequent, better and more timely stock assessments and catch estimates.

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That would be a great start to correcting this issue.

Thanks for the straight dope on this subject, Carl. Your insight and personal knowledge, are always helpful to me ( everyone? ) in understanding issues like this one. And you are certainly right about how to make a difference and create changes, if that is what we want.

I agree with the gist of what Carl said. The one upside to forum bitching is making more people aware of the issue though :)

I can think of one big player in this game that has been so far unmentioned, that is the Environmental Defense Fund, aka EDF. Fishery Solutions Center

This group has lobbied hard for the catch-share system. They have used such underhanded tactics as forming a lobbying group called The Charter Fisherman's Association that actually has nothing to do with charter fishing -- the board is comprised of commercial fishermen and EDF members.

There are some positives to catch shares. For instance, commercial fishermen don't have to risk fishing bad weather days since their season is 365 days. However, there are some HUGE negative side effects of this system.

The way it works is that commercial fishermen were assigned a quota, a "share" of fish that can be bought or sold on markets just like a stock market share on Wall Street. These shares last FOREVER. This means some super special lucky guys (guys with the right connections in many cases) magically own some of the red snapper, triggerfish, whatever out in the gulf. Public resource? Nope, these fish, living on reefs paid for by taxpayers in many cases, belong to someone. Now even imagining that these shares were originally handed out equitably (they weren't), the end result is a few individuals or corporations are going to buy up all the shares. These are the "snapper barons" you may have heard of. They then lease out their shares, paying pennies on the dollar to the guy actually catching the fish, pocketing huge money for nothing. This same scenario has already played out in places from Alaska to Gloucester.

End result, a public resource clusters in the hands of a few who become super wealthy off of it. Think these guys want recs out there fishing? Of course not. If you watched Big Fish Texas, you surely heard Buddy Guindon and his people demonzing the entire rec sector alternatively as elitists, morons, and poachers. So they throw their money at lobbying groups designed to limit the recreational sector as much as possible. They actively sabotage attempts by the states to create a more accurate data model.

The more you dig into it, the dirtier it all gets.

I do think there are practical solutions that would end this terrible snapper baron situation. Perhaps have the shares expire every year and quotas be sold at auction annually, preventing the life-long gifting of a public resource to a select few.