Just got this off another site. We must do something about his crap!!
Well, the good news is that there were some pogies in the bay. The bad news is that the Pogie boat had their first day of the season yesterday and took 150,000 pounds out of Mt Hope Bay. That equals roughly 80,000 to 120,000 pogies gone in one day. Think about that number. Some biologists feel that a major contributing factor to the decline of the herring runs is increased predation. Bass are eating more herring because there are fewer other natural forage species available to them. Pogies are probably the #1 forage food for bass. They much prefer them to herring, but when there are no pogies they eat more herring. And lobsters. And crabs. And eels.
Think about this: NJ allows no purse seine boats within 1 mile of their shoreline (many no closer than 3 miles based on the size of the boat). There are no seine boats allowed in LI sound. None allowed in CT state waters. RI allows the pogie boat ANYWHERE THEY WANT TO GO, even up into the Providence River. Make sense? NJ, LI sound and CT enjoy big schools of pogies all season long. RI hardly sees any. For some reason nobody in this state is willing or able to fight for restrictions on the pogie boat. I don't know what he has on everyone, but it must be good. We can take 12 herring per day on select days. Arc Bait can take as many pogies as they want any day they want. When the airplane they use to spot the schools say there are none left, they move to NJ and spend the rest of the season there.
It seems simple to me: you can't take every darn fish every year and not expect the fishery to decline. I just wish everyone who gets so mad about herring taken on the way up and over-limit fishing (rightfully so) doesn't spend a little of that energy on getting restrictions on the pogie fishery as well. Ok, I'm off my stump now. Sorry to rant.
Bart Wagner
