I'm concerned at the number of fish taken by boats (charter and private) these days. For instance, look at the number of Mahi caught recently; and the number of yellowfin tuna caught this season. I say too many!? I say this because I would bet that the majority of customers do not eat all of this fish! I see pictures of these great days offshore where numerous boats come in with limits of tuna or mahi ( and I admit, I have done this), but what actually happens to these fish??
I bring this up because I have been away from the NC coast for approx a year now. This past Sat. I fished with a friend of mine (non charter) out of MHC, and we slayed the mahi. Our goal was two fish per person = 12 fish, then we wanted to try to catch a billfish. Well, that 12 turned into 15 by the end of the day. After 12, we made every attempt to try to release the fish we caught, but a few we kept because of the way they were hooked, we released probably 10 twenty plus pound fish!! We had our twelve by noon, but wanted to keep fishing!! No huge fish were caught, but the amount of meat from these fish was huge. I will eat my catch, but I wonder what happens to the pounds and pounds of fish that others take from our fishing grounds??
I just think we should take a look at our fishing habits, both charter and liesure. If your charter or friends are going to make good use of the fish that you kill, then no harm done; but if that is not the case, then set a limit of the fish you want to keep before the trip, and release the others!!
I am fishing again this Thursday. I already have a cooler full of mahi, so my plan is to target a few meatfish and then try for a big blue one.
I encourage everyone to ask their charters /guests what they are going to do with their catch, and if they can handle 300lbs of fish to take home. If they can't, then release them for another day!!
Im glad someone else brought this up, as I was thinking about it for the last week. When we have our hordes of dolphin we keep a max of a dozen fish. I was in Exuma a month ago and could have sunk the vessel with dolphin, but kept enough to eat and released over 30 fish! Even if you legally allowed to keep 100 fish, why and how could you go out there and do that every week??
just my 2c. Ill keep fishing hard and keeping conservatively.
If Ignorance is bliss, Why aren't more people happy?
Join Date
Jan 2007
Location
Raleigh, MHC
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Boat
Luhrs 36
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Supporting my Tackle habit
One possibility is to tag your excess dolphin. There is a research program currently underway - and you can earn a T-Shirt for 5 Tagged fish.
Marine Anglers,
The offshore fishing season is now beginning in the south and there are lots of good things going on in the Dolphin Study. The new fishing restrictions in the Bahamas has lead to a surge in tagging in Bahamian waters this spring which hopefully will result in more information on the movement of these fish as they disperse from the Bahamas.
The feature article in this issue compares the behavior of the bull dolphin off south Florida and those off South Carolina as recorded by the high-tech pop-off satellite tags. These four devices have already painted a new picture of the dolphinfish. Dolphin use more of the vertical water column and lower temperatures than previously thought. The current study allows for three more of these high-tech devices to be deployed on dolphin off the Carolinas in 2007. A new study is currently being formulated to use these amazing instruments in 2008 to track fish for six months.
I've been thinking about this too- I told my brother before this past weekend that I was concerned about the mahi off the NC coast. There are a lot of big gaffers out there and I figured with the holiday and nice weather it was going to be a slaughter. It pretty much was-
If you look at my 5/16 & 5/17 report on Box's forum you'll see that we caught 20+ fish a day but only kept around 10 each day.
I mated on someone elses boat Saturday 5/26 and we ended up keeping 20.
(we had 3 nice fish- 42lb,38lb,& 36lb)
Personally- I thought we kept too many but I would NEVER come down on someone who keeps fish within the legal limits.
cltcapt- I think that the dolphin tagging thing is neat but I don't do it because I am concerned about the info getting into the 3rd world longliners hands. Talk about hurting the stocks.....
Here's a good pic!
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