They work for the phone company, N-star, they teach school, they're doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs, they work in the trades, they sit behind a desk.

Welcome to Massachusetts, where any Tom #^&#^&#^&#^& or Harry can pony up $65 and be a "commercial fisherman".

Swimmer, I believe it is punishable by jail time. I took a guy to court one time and his charge on the paperwork read, "Posession of short lobster" so Id imagine it would be the same for fish.

ya man it was a friggen zoo out there. I will tell you what tho nothin beats calling into work and fishing 13 14hrs and goin in the next day with 3rd degree sunburn. Just like mike p and ur paps said every tom, #^&#^&#^&#^& and harry is comm up there. What it came down to that day was fish every troll and ppl just staring like wtf r thoes guys doin?
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I understand that each coastal state has thier boundaries, but shouldnt this be a federal offense seeing how this is a migrating fish and each state has its offenders and victims. Victims being either the bass, the ecology, the recreational fisher, the commercial fisher, the b&t stores, tourism, etc..
I am no gem, but I dont take away from other peoples enjoyment and priveledges

.....but you don't spend the money in MA that you earn from catching fish in MA. Makes no economic sense at all for the state to let out of state commercials fish or sell here, unless they feel the MA commercial fleet by itself could not fill the state's quota. Gives away a significant part of the financial benefit from the state's commercial quota to neighboring states. Hard to see why they allow it.

Out of staters pay way more for a license, ($460 myself), then you spend money on Fuel, Lodging, Food, slip / ramp fees, tackle... How is that not an economic benefit???

If you didnt have out of staters than the rec guys would be bitchin' about the com guys a few more weeks as the season stays open! :-))))

As a rec only guy it makes no difference at all to me how long it takes the comm guys to fill the state quota. The quota doesn't change so what difference does it make how ling it takes to fill.

If we didn't have out of state guys filling our state quota, then the guys that do live here & fish commercially would get a few more weeks to catch & sell fish & they would make more money is a season.

A lot of what you post is self-serving, but this is ridiculous.

You make a profit in MA commercial fishing and you take it home with you.......otherwise you wouldn't be here. If you are as good as you make yourself out to be, then it is not a small profit either. That money benefits the state you spend it in. Presumably you pay taxes on it (although I'd bet many guys don't) and use the rest for your family's living expenses. That money in turn gets taxed and spent by others where you live (multiplier effect). If a million dollars leaves MA it results in several million dollars of lost economic activity. That is money that could be helping the people of MA.

So explain to me again how it is in the State's interest to allow out of state utilization of our commercial quota?

license is way too cheap for out of stater's. Hell you paid for that on a crappy trip with the price this year. I too don't care about time it takes to fill the limit. RI people aren't spending on food and lodging, etc.. I'd bet only a very small minority do as you do. Most just take a short trip over the border, make their $$ and spend all their cash in their own back yard. I guess you can tell I am against out of state use. Heck you may as well buy a summer home up here and become a resident for the summer.

This is nothing. There is way too much illegal fishing buying/selling going on and no one is enforcing much of anything. 450 buck fine is laughable and provides more incentive to fish illegally than deterrent.

Game-fish status is the simplest answer given the level of enforcement we will ever have. Any complex quotas or slot limits CAN NOT be enforced and are worthless.


Gamefish status, 1 fish rec take (any-size).

I know I spend several thousand in mass on gas, food, lodging every year, every dollar spent in mass has an economic benefit. Any diferent than rec guys traveling to other states to recreationally fish. Cmon, We all know how expensive fishing is...
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You wouldn't be spending the money unless you were getting a return on the investment.

$460 is a few good fish.It really makes no sense for anyone in the commonwealth.I feel if there were reciprocation it would be worth considering,otherwise it is lose,lose for the state.Oh well,something else for people to whine about obviously.

I think this is getting off track.This is about a poaching dirtbag.Not about rec/comm.
Oh yeah,I say throw everything that they can,at him,including illegal charters if that's the case(I think I read he's not a Cpt,right)If he's chartering illegally,that fine would probably be more than the poaching fines.

The quota is worth a fixed number of dollars to the state. A guy who comes in and spends 2000 dollars and leaves with 8000 dollars reduces the value of that quota by 8000 dollars and creates a net loss for the state of 6000 dollars initially, but probably closer to 10,000 dollars after multiplier effects are accounted for.

So, again, as a citizen of MA why should my family, my neighbors, and myself lose 10,000 dollars of economic activity so you can come here and sell fish? Talk about a resource grab....this one is a grand-daddy.

Mass guys sell in Ri, Ct guys sell in ri, mass, Ri guys sell on mass and so on... It goes on with the bigger draggers, comm vessels selling out way more than a grand of fish in different states, ur talking millions. There were some scallops coming in from Va into mass??? Fluke draggers from nc selling out in Nj??? It's all really damn confusing..... Anyway, I gotta finish up the night shift and get ready for Tuesday, wed, thurs!!!!
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Good point.

It really sucks for the striped bass but it's job security for the ep's and fines are revenue for the state.... So habitual offenders generate revenue for the state and in return an economic benefit for the state??? In this incident wasn't it a mass boat taking bass out of Ri? It was Ri that economically benefited on this as i hear he was more than eager to pay the fine and move on...
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It is not confusing at all, and I'm sure you are smart enough to know that there is an interstate commerce in fish taken from federal waters that has nothing to do with state quotas, as well as an interstate commerce in fish caught legally in state waters but governed by a coast-wide quota.

You are also smart enough to know that you have no valid argument as to why the current system allowing you to profit from the quota allocated to the residents of MA should be allowed to stand. Hence your obvious obfuscations and sudden convenient confusion.

But for now, the system is what it is, you are well within your rights to fish here,.....and from my perspective dead fish are dead fish so I don't really care who kills them. Even though it would be nice to see more of the profit from killing them benefit the citizens of my state, it isn't happening anytime soon, so for now your can feel safe being smug........which obviously you also know.....but please spare us the phony rationalizations as to why it is all good and grand for the rest of us.

Well Put
 

Well put, a striper is a migratory fish it should be managed by the feds, just like migratory birds like ducks. Another point remember that once migratory birds were legally hunted for proffit by market hunters. Market hunters have gone the way of the passenger pidgeon. Hopefully people will wake up and protect the striped bass from the vast majority of commercials and the recs who both take as many fish as they are legally entiltled to with no thought of the future or the health of the striped bass fishery. Who knows, during the current downward spiral (which is occurring ask any fisheries scientist or a reasonable person) we might be able to finish off striper this time. We came close in the eighties but this time it could be forever! Charlie

I think there is STILL ...........much to be learned

speaking of dead fish..... that includes the small fry encountering
pollution where they hatched out and how farmers need to prevent run off from reaching the breeding grounds.

when you consider how many eggs each Cow lays and how many dinks actually survive the Journey back to the sea....

much could be done to increase those odds in the Striper's favor.

It must suck to make a living always having to look over your shoulder wondering if your going to get caught, trying to figure out how your going to scam the system, what other sleazy thing you can think of to try to rip someone/something off.

I think what everybody fails to understand is that there is a reciprocity system in place between MA and RI commercial licensing; it has been in effect for as long as I can remember. Both states fishermen have been fishing/offloading/selling in each others states for years...draggers, ground gear, etc. Before the license moratorium in RI (several years ago, for ALL in state/out of state), MA guys could get a RI license (I know a number of MA guys who hold RI licenses). Back in the 70's, early 80's, everybody in RI sold their catch in MA...better prices than the Pt. Jude Co-op then....we pay the price now because of the way the catch history was used to set up state bass quotas after the commercial moratorium was set aside.

Also, look at the menhaden seining problem in Narragansett Bay....2 boats, both registered and docked in MA (but with RI seine licenses), seine approximately 100,000 lbs a day, each, till the RI biomass is below 50% (like someone is monitoring it)...calculate the dollars earned by both these boats, then tell me about a resource grab....

JMAC ,

IS CORRECT ON ...BACK IN THE DAY ......... IT TOOK SOME OF US A WHILE TO FIND OR FIGURE OUT on how much we were egtting screwed by the RI dealers . but by the time they shut done commercial back then . I would say 70% of the RI commerciLA WERE GOING TO WESTPORT OR nEW bEDFORD :fishin:

W OW ..THat was f ed up typing ><><>

Lets start another thread .........rec ,s taking undersize fluke . this thread \\\ has:wall: been well beaten ><>><><<><:jump1::jump1:

There's a well known story still being hashed out on the South Shore of someone selling illegal bluefin.

They don't %$%$%$%$ around with tuna. He's going to probably lose his boat.

Big fines.

This is how you deal with poaching.

Tuna buys lead to $100k in restaurant fines in Ogunquit | SeacoastOnline.com

How many products are made in Jersey and shipped up here for sale. Its no different than any other interstate commerce. Protected under federal law.

There is no limit on those sales. The government can't go up to Apple and say "hey, you can only sell 2 million laptops tp Massachusetts and 4 million iPhones to New Jersey this year and then you're shut down."

On the other hand, and I think this is numbskull's point which I agree with, the government tells the commercial fishing sector that they can only catch so many lbs of fish. As such, there is a limit to how much money will be made from selling fish. By MA allowing out-of-state people to comm fish here, those people get paid by our local markets, and then they take that money to their home state to be used in the local economies of NY or NJ or wherever, as opposed to being used locally in our state.

If a MA market pays a MA fisherman $1000 for his catch, then the fisherman later uses that money to buy his local coffee at the mom and pop shop, at RedTop for extra tackle/bait and to pay his rent. That money stays locally, helps local businesses and is taxed locally.

On the other hand, if that same $1000 is paid to a NY fisherman, then that money leaves the state with him to stimulate *their* local economy as opposed to the benefits being preserved here.

This is like a micro version of our national trade situation. Every dollar we Americans use for imported goods is a dollar that stops being utilized domestically. With the current state of our economy and the number of people without jobs, every little bit helps.

Ideally, commercial licenses would only be renewed by filing a 1040/1099 indicating that at least 50% of the taxpayers' gross income was derived from the sale of fish. That's the way it has always been in NY and some other states that issue commercial licenses.

I also wonder how many non-residents are filing Mass tax returns. I have always had to file returns in every state in which I have earned income. Some markets pay by check--some pay by cash. My sense is a lot of cash transactions don't get reported to any state, or to the IRS.

I have no problems with reciprocity--but to me, the height of idiocy is Mass issuing licenses to anglers who either reside in gamefish states, or who live in grandfathered states where Mass anglers either couldn't get a license at all, or couldn't get bass tags.

I also have no problem with Mass grandfathering existing licenses to out-of-staters, but issuing new licenses to people who live in states where we can't get a commercial license is wrong.

It's a different game now, with ASMFC and hard commercial quotas. Mass is doing its full time commercials a disservice. DMF cares more about licensing fees than its own resident commercials who actually make a living from the sea. And that is wrong, any way you slice it.

I'm not pointing fingers at anyone who plays by the rules. Report your catches, pay your taxes, and my problem isn't with you--it's with the rule makers.