Who am I?

[Big Fish Billy]

Think of it like a war. Innocent citizens are in a city that also has troops. Somebody starts bombing the city into dust for no reason. Maybe those bombs were meant for the troops. Or maybe not. One can assume but nobody knows really for sure. Maybe they want to take the citizens too just so they don't need to deal with them later. But the bombing is continuing til there is nothing left. Both troop and innocent civilian are now on the same page and just want the bombing to stop.

one thing that seems a certainty........whether it be.....BANS.....CATCH LIMITS.....ADDITIONAL PERMITS.......or even FINES.......ANY TYPE OF FISHERMAN/WOMAN...will not be happy and costs will rise.....

Well Deep, if you're getting bombed, get out of Dodge, promote the separation...and Hat, you're right, once there is a closure, say tuna, that ole sandwich is gonna cost some bigger dough...remember as you align yourselves, no sportfisherman, charter/head boat, ever ran the tonnage up on any fishery to the limit, it is the careless and greedy commercial aspect including the middlemen....let me take you back to yesteryear if I can remember the details, give me a break if I'm off on the years...somewhere in the early 70's I made the jump from fresh to salt water fishing...bought a 27' Carver, and began fishing and family cruising around our local ports...I was out on the Prong one day fishing bluefish, when some monster came out of the water like a nuclear submarine and took my bluefish and rod for a ride...it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen save whales...when I got back to the dock I started to tell the old timers about what happened, "members of the board" we called them, (we had a 16' 2x12 across a couple foundation bricks on the pier, and these old seafarers would sit around, chew the fat, and tell stories all day.) Well Billy they said, "sounds like a bluefin tuna got hold of ya." (spit) So I made my mind up I was gonna figure out how to get one. I spent time with the old manager of the marina and he got me fitted up with some handline baskets. As I was walking by the board members, old Carly asks, "whatcha doing there Billy?" Going Tuna-ing..."whatcha gonna do if you catch one." Gee, hadn't thought about that...there was no market for them at that time...a few catch and release tuna clubs around, but if you brought one back to the dock, you had to pay someone to "get rid of it for you", once you took pictures and all...so I fished on, didn't catch any, found out later the Mrs was busy saying Hail Marys the whole time so I wouldn't get one...a couple years later the Japs declared Bluefin Tuna a delicasy and the game was on...up graded to a 69 Post Sportfisher, pulpit, tower, harpoons, kegs, rods/reels the works and went fishing, can't remember if I needed the Fed permit right off the bat, but I got one anyway, for free, and began catching them up, big ones, 80" and bigger was the size limit I believe, if one made a run past the stern of my boat and wasn't as long, the dart didn't get thrown, coop buy boats would come out and take the fish, pay you, bring bait, ice etc...money started out small, but we were fishing for fun anyway, and got our expenses paid for, never heard a word about gross tonnage limits etc...won a lot of tournaments from Bailey's Island Maine, Gloucester, Martha's Vineyard with 1,000lb+ fish, heck we wouldn't even look at the small ones...then little by little the money went up, and the rules flowed in, you needed a MA license to sell your fish first off, (well you all know Taxychusetts), then one day while we were out of the Ledge a big factory boat out of Gloucester came out and netted 300, 800 pound fish and the commercial game was on...the season for ALL of us came to an early end that year as "gross tonnage" was met in early September...game over. Next year we had "fishing days", only once a month did they include weekends so the rec guy could go. Then we had expensive equipment inspections (good ideas mind you, but designed to get the little rec guy out)...and so the story went, you see where I'm going...there is no reason in this world to stop rec/charter from fishing any category, no rec/charter gang ever ran the catch to the limit...so do I align my thinking with commercial, nope, they got their game I got mine, I respect and can control my catch, and only take what I'm supposed to, of anything...lobster is a perfect example of a proper fishery, anyone can get a license to do it, there are proper size limits to maintain the fishery, there's a mechanism for the little guys to get out, and aside for some controlling of prices etc, the fishery maintains some logic, how do you build this commercially into another fishery, well I don't know, and I shouldn't have to, it's not my game, but when I go out and want to catch something, and follow the rules, there should be no reason why not...ok, I got to go vacuum rain water out of my cellar.....I'll be back....

[hubris 1]

Well Deep, if you're getting bombed, get out of Dodge, promote the separation...and Hat, you're right, once there is a closure, say tuna, that ole sandwich is gonna cost some bigger dough...remember as you align yourselves, no sportfisherman, charter/head boat, ever ran the tonnage up on any fishery to the limit, it is the careless and greedy commercial aspect including the middlemen....let me take you back to yesteryear if I can remember the details, give me a break if I'm off on the years...somewhere in the early 70's I made the jump from fresh to salt water fishing...bought a 27' Carver, and began fishing and family cruising around our local ports...I was out on the Prong one day fishing bluefish, when some monster came out of the water like a nuclear submarine and took my bluefish and rod for a ride...it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen save whales...when I got back to the dock I started to tell the old timers about what happened, "members of the board" we called them, (we had a 16' 2x12 across a couple foundation bricks on the pier, and these old seafarers would sit around, chew the fat, and tell stories all day.) Well Billy they said, "sounds like a bluefin tuna got hold of ya." (spit) So I made my mind up I was gonna figure out how to get one. I spent time with the old manager of the marina and he got me fitted up with some handline baskets. As I was walking by the board members, old Carly asks, "whatcha doing there Billy?" Going Tuna-ing..."whatcha gonna do if you catch one." Gee, hadn't thought about that...there was no market for them at that time...a few catch and release tuna clubs around, but if you brought one back to the dock, you had to pay someone to "get rid of it for you", once you took pictures and all...so I fished on, didn't catch any, found out later the Mrs was busy saying Hail Marys the whole time so I wouldn't get one...a couple years later the Japs declared Bluefin Tuna a delicasy and the game was on...up graded to a 69 Post Sportfisher, pulpit, tower, rods/reels the works and went fishing, can't remember if I needed the Fed permit right off the bat, but I got one anyway, for free, and began catching them up, big ones, 80" and bigger was the size limit I believe, coop buy boats would come out and take the fish, pay you, bring bait, ice etc...money started out small, but we were fishing for fun anyway, and got our expenses paid for, never heard a word about gross tonnage limits etc...won a lot of tournaments from Bailey's Island Maine, Gloucester, Martha's Vineyard with 1,000+ fish, heck we wouldn't even look at the small ones...then little by little the money went up, and the rules flowed in, you needed a MA license to sell your fish first off, (well you all know Taxychusetts), then one day while we were out of the Ledge a big factory boat out of Gloucester came out and netted 300, 800 pound fish and the commercial game was on...the season for ALL of us came to an early end that year as "gross tonnage" was met in early September...game over. Next year we had "fishing days", only once a month did they include weekends so the rec guy could go. Then we had expensive equipment inspections (good ideas mind you, but designed to get the little rec guy out)...and so the story went, you see where I'm going...there is no reason in this world to stop rec/charter from fishing any category, no rec/charter gang ever ran the catch to the limit...ok, I got to go vacuum rain water out of my cellar.....I'll be back....

I love it! And it pretty much sums it up, dont it? With that in mind I have an idea.........What say you and me and maybe a couple other guys go to North Carolina next year and do just that? What do we really need? Nothing. I got some 50 wides, we can find a japanese sushi place to sell the fish to, [cut out that middle man] Do we need any kind of permit? We can get that too. Theres gold in them hills and I want my part of it too. The little guy in the summer will just have to suck it up that he cant go catch any bluefin in the 60 lb range because we did it for him. If we can catch 10 six hundred pound fish and sell them we break even but its a start for us. Get in on the ground floor sort of and then no one can kick us out with out paying us to leave. I cant finish my story until you finish yours because I dont have any idea how I became a commercial fisherman, [thats what they want to say i am now] Im just a recreational guy that wanted to go catch my share of fish.......which no one owns by the way. ps, just to keep the govt boys at bay maybe we should name the boat....I Fish, I Vote.

[Big Fish Billy]

I imagine anyone can get their own Jap buyer, their own Jap factory ship, sit in international waters, and do whatever they want...I on the other hand wouldn't play with anything less than 800 pounds, my hope would be to lay off them for a number of years until the schools reach that size, have a full season recreational fishery, and a severely controlled commercial fishery,(especially since most of the catch goes overseas) I'll take a guess at half whatever it is now to start, and let recreational fishermen experience to fun of hooking onto and fighting an express train, there's nothing like it, and anyone who wants to try should have a chance, if you hook a small one, you let him off and pay a fine if you kill him, if you get a keeper, you have a choice of tagging and letting him off, or bringing him to sell. If I caught a keeper with a charter, the boat keeps the fish and the guys got another day out, when we got smaller ones, off they went....Just to say it, the last time I won the Wentworth Tuna Tourny my fish was 1,180lbs, before they ended the tourny it was won at 425lb, pretty sad to me.......

[FreddyFlameout]

Can't imagine having a fish that big on, but I'd sure like to be able to have a chance someday though.

[scattered_grass]

There are a lot of good points being made here on this thread.

I personally, would prefer some separation from the commercial guys. This however is where things get complicated, because it seems that people have their own versions of what a "commercial fisherman" is.

I do not consider the guy who fishes on the weekends, has permits to sell Dolphin and Wahoo to the marina to help supplement fuel cost, slip rent etc... a commercial fisherman. He is not fishing for a living, nor is he killing large amounts of fish that will deplete the population. I do not consider a charter boat that takes multiple parties out during the summer to catch their limit of dolphin and possibly snag a billfish, a commercial operation.

To me a commercial fisherman is someone who sets thousands of yards of nets or line with hooks placed every so often, catching anything that happens to swim by, edible or not. This person does this on a daily basis, or most days out of the year.

Every once and a while, dad will set a flounder net in front of our house to catch some fish to eat. He will usually do this when the flounder get thick in the river during the summer. He does not do this daily, nor is he putting out very long nets. Dad is not a commercial fisherman in that he is not catching large quantities of fish on a regular basis.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that there is obviously a variance in the amount of this resource that two different people may take.

[Big Jay]

So you have the two sides of the coin:

Rec guys/charter guys: People who enjoy fishing for it's fun. Charter...same thing. They make their money on people wanting to have fun. Simple as that.

Comms: Make money by catching the fish.

No matter how you cut it...it's that simple. However, there's a multi-billion dollar business surrounding recreational and commercial fisherman. You can try to determine which makes more of an impact. Both effect a tremendous amount of people's livelihoods.

My proposal is this: Let's stop cutting the balls off of American citizens and start worrying about those taking fish from our waters. Instead, this task forces takes the easy route and chooses to throw the collar on us vs. foreign boats raping our natural resources.

People think this doesn't happen...oh boy it does. LFT and YFT's? Thank the French, Spanish, and African (etc.) boats slaughtering them off the coast of Africa. Len a month ago had a tag returned finally from a YFT tagging effort in the Hudson a couple years ago. Location? Near Cape Verde Africa.

[colorado]

I dont understand..... if you have to sell fish, (wahoo and mahi) to pay for gas and bait and maintenance.....you are commercial...... if you sell fish to pay for gas and bait and maintenance...and you call yourself a rec..you are playing financialy out of your league. Now if your friends pool thier money and buy gas and bait and help with maintenance and everyone keeps the fish they catch.....that is rec fishing.

Folks arent going to agree with me, that is way alright.

They are gonna call me names, that is way alright.

I used to come here for a little learning, then it just became entertainment. Now it is downright pitiful. The name calling, people calling others out for not jumping quick enough on thier bandwagon, then calling them out when they do.

What Ive really learned is there isnt anything anyone can do to make some of you happy.

.........BTW... I fish out of a canoe.....cause its what I can afford.

[Big Fish Billy]

So you have the two sides of the coin:

Rec guys/charter guys: People who enjoy fishing for it's fun. Charter...same thing. They make their money on people wanting to have fun. Simple as that.

Comms: Make money by catching the fish.

No matter how you cut it...it's that simple. However, there's a multi-billion dollar business surrounding recreational and commercial fisherman. You can try to determine which makes more of an impact. Both effect a tremendous amount of people's livelihoods.

My proposal is this: Let's stop cutting the balls off of American citizens and start worrying about those taking fish from our waters. Instead, this task forces takes the easy route and chooses to throw the collar on us vs. foreign boats raping our natural resources.

People think this doesn't happen...oh boy it does. LFT and YFT's? Thank the French, Spanish, and African (etc.) boats slaughtering them off the coast of Africa. Len a month ago had a tag returned finally from a YFT tagging effort in the Hudson a couple years ago. Location? Near Cape Verde Africa.

Here we go, as if by magic the answer came to me. let's take two years, one year the rec/charter/head boats fish for bluefin tuna, the next year the comm guys go, let's see which year the catch approaches the limit.......on your off year, you fish for something else, simple as that......fu$k the Japs, on the comm off year, they eat shit......