Quote:
Originally Posted by piemma
The herring ban has helped somewhat, but a menhaden ban would also be beneficial.
RI has a new set of laws on the books, as of this year, for bunker in the Bay. I don't fully understand them but the jist of what I got from reading was that there can be no commercial havest of bunker until there is 2 million pounds in the Bay. When that number is hit, the commercial boats (read Arc Bait) can take a total of no more than 500, 000 pounds. Then it closes. In theory this means that there will be a constant sustained population of 1.5 million pounds of bunker in Narragansett Bay.
Now, I am not gullible enough to believe that the DEM guys can police the numbers so this will be an inaccurate science. How do they know when 2 million pounds are in residence? They will know when 500,000 pounds are taken as long as they keep a DEM guy on the commercial boats. I hope this works because last year was just stupid. You had these guys in a boat from Glouster MA (the Ugly Duck) s#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g up every menhaden they could find, running offshore and unloading and then running back up to the Hurricane Barrier in Prov and doing it again and again. They finally got caught and, I heard, they are banned from fishing RI waters forever.
Now I have nothing against the commercial guys. Don't take this as a knock on them. The problem last year was that they netted EVERYTHING swimming in the upper Bay and by June you couldn't buy a bunker for $50. They were just all netted or vacumned up. There needs to be equality so all of the fishermen (recs and comms) get to use the resource.
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They blamed the weather wasn't allowing the spotters to fly and get a good count.They never closed it until it was too late.That and the guys fishing for them with the wrong nets and others exploiting the laws made it a bad year for bunker.There was a few shops paying guys from out of state for secret shipments that were paid for before they even arrived and at crazy prices.I'd like to see them keep the pogie boats out of the bay for good.They offer nothing good to the state,the health of the bay or any fishery.I'd rather get my own bait.
Herring should stay closed until they are healthy in every run and so thick you could walk on them.Even at that point we should wait a few more years and just observe the patterns and use the highest point as a baseline for numbers.