[Mr. Sandman]

I am glad you are outraged. According to the DMF in MA, there are plenty of fish. Years ago we had too many SB, that is why there were more around back then. These people, some who are very educated, can not manage anything. Remember they were in charge of managing SB and codfish while it went to disaster level. They have not saved a damn thing. A forced moratorium is not a form a management. This could have been done without them!!!

IMO The only way to protect the fishery is to protect as a gamefish and allow 1 @ 36 for a rec, and at the same time make significant strides in improving baitfish populations. It has worked before and will work again. It is simple and will bring back big fish for the masses to catch while growing the biomass while protecting the real economic value to the fishing society.

As for attending meetings to make change...Forgetaboutit. You can go and voice your thoughts but there is no way you will make change their minds. Public hearings are a joke. In the end they (the board behind closed doors) read what the scientists and pubic say but then decide to do something that is not connected to either unless they are forced to. Gamefish is the only solution with very a simple rec take. If you want SB for restaurants...go grow them.

I know the canal has it's issues. IMO there should be no fishing in the canal. It is like fishing in a fish ladder. It is a man made passage way. However the public access is so easy that anyone can easily go down there and catch fish. I know that will not happen (closing the canal to fishing) so the only other way is to limit the take to one @ 36. If you want to regulate it further, eliminate rec fishing for bass all together. This might be a good start. Canada does it for tuna and they have more fish than you can shake a stick at. In fact you can not even do C&R in canada for more than one fish per day. C&R kills fish too. After your one fish you can only feed them. I think that is excessive but we could shut bass fishing down all together for a decade and then slowly open it up, with one or two fish per season. (I took one bass 38" home this season, no one needs one per day.) The MSY theory does not work, esp when every "user group" thinks they own a chunk of it, it is only an academic theory, it can not be implemented the way our government allocates the fish to different so called user groups .