Quote:
Originally Posted by Van
Maybe not touching fish in the mid size (26-40) class is good for reproduction of the species. BUT........allowing taking of fish from 20-26 makes no sense at all. There will be no fish growing to the mid size class if schoolies are fair game.... JMHO.....
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wellll the theory behind it is that the larger mid sized fish will out produce the amounts being caught. i dunno the exact number but lets say.. those 26's would lay 1mil eggs each. and the 35-40's would lay 3 or 4mil each. as you can see keeping 1 or 2 larger fish makes a much bigger impact on the amount of eggs laid.
will it be easier to catch keepable fish? yes. but it if ends up saving thousands of larger fish, it ends up saving 3-4 bililon possibly even more fish for the next season (not taking into account survival rates of fry ofcourse) which then a few years down the line will be of that keepable size. but there will be so many more of them that more will be able to pass into that protected size range than what currently is there. and then the process repeats with even greater numbers of fish.
thats the theory. but i can foresee the second the schoolies numbers increase they will go right back to the current method instead of sticking with it. and the cycle will start all over again.