I was out fishing for giants at the bb bouy with on the hook Dave Sloan, Larry Russo' capt Chuck Destefano and Sparky last Friday. We got there and the pair trawlers were scooping up herring from 300 feet down. What we witnessed was sickening hundreds and I mean hundreds of bass "not one under 25lbs some close to 50" just floating on top of the water upside down their bellies blown up like helium baloons. I asked chuck about this and he said he'd seen it much worse than that and it's been going on for a while.So much for conservation and bag limits on bass. It really is a damn shame so many bass wasted and left to have their eyes picked out by seagulls . pete

I bet problems & situations like this occur way more often than we really know about. Sickening. Alot of scumbags around and not enough officials to monitor & stop it. :af:

That is terrible. Is it against the law? Who would you report that to and would they do anything? Bycatch is a terrible thing.

[i thought i posted this earlier, guess not, maybe it ended up somewhere else]

Did you guys get it on film? That would make a great episode of "on the hook!!!"

FILM baby ...
big time film it and send it off

Pete,
I know you guys were filming for an episode of On The Water,
You should have turned the cameras to that for an episode !!!

Unfortunately, bycatch is self-policing unless there is an observer on boat.
These boats are restricted by the government not to sell what they vacuum up in their nets. Herring is a small mesh fishery and it's not unusual to see large amounts of any fish feeding on the herring to be discarded sometime it could be 50% of the haul. souther shrimping can be over 70% And you wonder why tuna follow them around

A popular agreement with commericals now is the the sporting community has a higher mortality with catch and release than discarded fish!! Right, I see that!!!!

If these commercials have the latest gear they can tell the mix of what is down there, each fish has a different acoustic signature. Would love to see that captured and reviewed along with gps coordinates of each haul back to
NMFS or DEP. Unfortunately, it's take over 10 years just to get trackers in scallopers!!!


Bill

Unfortunatly I don't think what you guys witnessed is illegal. Those trawlers threw the bass back because comm bass season is over and must be caught on hook and line. So they have to throw the bycatch over. It is a product of commercial dragging. I don't favor gillnets either but gillnetting is far more size specific than a dragger, species specific not. Science has come a long way with new types of drag nets that will catchmore of a specific species because of different colors and things at the beginning of a trawl say to scare cod away and catch more haddock that hang a bit higher than cod. Neat stuff. But I agree when you see that it is is an eye opener.

Just wait till next month when you guys will be into nice cod jigging between graves and the B-bouy. Then Dec 1st the inshore gillnetters will be there. And when they haul there nets and get more than there 600# or what ever they are allowed the rest will go over dead. I forget if they imposed a closer in this area with the meetings they had this past summer on this situation. Maybe it is closed to all fishing this year?? Don't know.

not sure how to prevent this type of bycatch. maybe some kind of equipment mods.? striper excluders? seems like a horrible waste in a time when so many do so much to help the bass population. reading this made me sick :yak:

Lots of talk has been going on at MSBA. See this article o the website.
Officers of MSBA will be attending hearing to address this issue.

http://www.msba.net/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=113&Itemid=39

Beamie,

It appears that there will be a spawning closure in the areas that you talk about with regard to the spawning aggregations of cod. I am pretty sure that all fishing rec & comm will be closed from Dec 1st to Jan 15. I testified on behalf of MSBA in favor ofd the closure last night in Gloucester...there is a hearing in Plymouth tonight




Just wait till next month when you guys will be into nice cod jigging between graves and the B-bouy. Then Dec 1st the inshore gillnetters will be there. And when they haul there nets and get more than there 600# or what ever they are allowed the rest will go over dead. I forget if they imposed a closer in this area with the meetings they had this past summer on this situation. Maybe it is closed to all fishing this year?? Don't know.

As beamie says, it's the way the regs work today.
It used to be worse, just go down south and shrimp at 70% discard

Basic,

Thanks for that update. Unfortunately for me being half a world away it doesn't effect my fishing.

I, and I'm sure every member of this board and Mass Bass, appreciate your devotion to attending the political and fisheries council meetings.

A closure will only be a good thing for the GOM cod stock come Dec 1st. There will be plenty of cod for the inshore angler the last couple weeks of Nov. But it sounds like you guys are out of luck with the weather about 6 days a week.

Thanks again.

The comm "by-catch" that has been going on for years up and down the coast has always been more or less dismissed as insignificant, but they really have no idea of the magnitude. IMO, at a minimum, this tonnage needs to be accurately estimated and deducted from the comm limit. If you did this there would be no comm limit, in fact they may actually have to put fish back... Can you imagine 50" fish floating belly up. Torpedo their boat.


How can a "managed fishery" claim they know what they are doing only to find out that the fishery is "overfished" after many years of their "management"? (case in point herring) IMO this should NEVER happen, ever, and EVERYONE at the DMF on up the chain who was connected with this should loose their job because of it. I am serious about this.

MA DMF (as well as other states) is a complete and utter failure IMO. Everything they attempt to "manage" turns out to be eventually overfished, does more harm then good, regs make little common sense, and are so skewed towards protecting the comm fishermans livelyhood that it ignores all else. Eventually this is going to backfire (in their face) and I think the day is closer then they realize. If you get this on film, it will be one more nail in their coffin. :behead:

Good thing they are protecting the dogfish though eh? :poke:

Given the FACTS of their crack job they are doing with herring, WHY ARE THEY FISHING FOR STILL THEM? Ans. Because they are greedy idiots, that want to catch all they can now before any regs go into effect. Why is this allowed?

They will fish those breeder cod until (again) they crush every last one if they could. LEAVE THE
BREADERS ALONE! This fishery is another example of a complete failure. The number of cod that use to be around here "back in the day" dwarfs todays amounts. And it has been "managed" for 20 years.

You may think this is extreme but IMO a lot of comm fishing needs to be shut down altogether for at least 10 years.

You want to fix the problems....do this:

NO GILL NETTING WHATSOEVER
No comm fishing inside bays, sounds and within 5 miles of any coast.
No comm Bass, Cod, winter and summer flounder, tog, Weakfish, herring, (and several others) fishing until the situation hits record amounts.
Regulate so the indv fishery and their forage are PROTECTED from EVER being overfished.
All boats must have inspectors on board.
No dumping of any dead fish. Everything dead must be brought in and accounted for.

not sure how to prevent this type of bycatch. maybe some kind of equipment mods.? striper excluders? seems like a horrible waste in a time when so many do so much to help the bass population. reading this made me sick :yak:



That's easy to figure out ... torpedo the vessel doing the damage.

If you don't have any torpedos onboard a molitov cocktail made from a beer bottle will work just as well. :laugha:

I'm sure it'll get their attention! :rocketem:

I sat next to a comercial gillnetter at breakfast one morning when the RI commercial season was open. He was openly bragging to he friend that they killed about 30 bass over 45 lbs to take a few 50 and 60 lb bass to finnish the day.

made me wanna :yak: