year 2010 recreational catch statistics

[numbskull]

Originally Posted by CowHunter

Arent these NOAA statistics actually reported by fishermen via countmyfish.gov through these new licenses we are supposed to have??? d netting and intentional waste / discard of Bass down in MD, VA, NC...

NO. Recreational numbers are made up by charter boat statistics, that are relatively accurate based on reliable sampling, and non-charter catch, that is extremely inaccurate and based on fishing effort and catch rate estimates obtained by angler sampling. The Technical committee report I gave you the link to above explains that there is good reason to believe these estimates are wildly overblown and the huge recreational catch numbers (that you and others use to chastise concerned recreational fishermen, and defend continued commercial catch quotas) are in fact pure fantasy.

It is important to realize that the ASMFC does not care, however, about what percentage of the catch is recreational, and what percentage is commercial..........they care about total catch and total population.

Since they have good reason to suspect that recreational fishing pressure is much less than the number they are using, they have good reason to suspect the fishery can handle more commercial take, hence their move to increase the commercial take.
Now keep in mind they wanted to increase the commercial take by 10%.
Yet they suspect the recreational catch is 50% over estimated.
That suggests that 100% of the non-charter recreational catch equals about 20% of the commercial catch......or that commercial landings are FIVE TIMES larger than NON-CHARTER recreational landings.

Now you can argue that charter fishing is recreational fishing, but the bottom line.......which fits my experience........is that the average schmuck recreational guys that make up 90% of the people using the resource end up killing a much smaller total share of the resource than the small number of guys making money off the fish.

Gamefish anyone?