OK--you're king for a day

[Mike P]

How would you manage the bass fishery, if you had the ultimate power in your hot little hands. The two threads ongoing are getting kind of cluttered.

After thinking it over, here would be what I would decree:

Coastwide recreational slot limit, two fish per day, 20" to 26".

Coastwide trophy tag system, each angler gets 5 tags annually to use on fish 40" plus. This would allow anglers to keep a fish of a lifetime, and fish a tournament or two, but you'd have to choose your trophies wisely.

The cost of printing, distributing and managing the tags would be paid out of what's inevitably going to get shoved down our throats, like it or not--a SW license.

I would leave whether to have a commercial fishery to the states. Gamefish states, however, get no extra consideration and no additional trophy tags for their anglers.

I would limit participation to people that derive at least 50% of their gross annual income from the sale of fin and shellfish. Commercial fishing will mean exactly that, not a means for recs to defray the cost of a hobby.

I'd let each state decide its own commercial size/bag limits.

Quotas would remain as currently distributed.

The EEZ ban makes no sense to me. As long as the fish count against some state's quota it seems immaterial to me where they're caught.