Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Sandman
The largest fish chart are actual facts, "reports of large amounts in the EEZ" are more or less hearsay without numbers of any kind and therefore less significant than the derby's numbers. That said, I am sure there are a body of fish migrating offshore, and perhaps this is where satellite tagging would help, but no one is really looking into the decline of the size, quality and numbers of fish.
I have to say we had plenty of fish around here in July nothing huge but decent numbers of 20's.
According to all the experts and articles I have read, we should have broken the world record by now...we were supposed to be seeing more 50#+ fish by now.
All of this IMO points to a overall decline in size, number and quality of bass. No doubt bait is a big part of the problem as well but as long as fishery "experts" focus on the problems by a species by species approach and not a big overall picture (including forage fish) I think we are doomed.
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I don't think the biggest fish taken over a 5 week period of the derby really represents a realistic sample of the overall health of bass. There are so many factors that can affect shore fishing - as stated above, the gray seals for one.
As a friend of mine once said, "when we shore fish, we are just outlining the vast area these fish live in. Those big fish from back in the day could still be around, just 5 miles off shore."
Even when a scientific research study of the health of fish stocks is done, there still seems to be an immense difficulty pinpointing the health of the fish stocks. Just looking at the YOY chart demonstrates this - numbers completely all over the place with no real consistency or statistically significant trending aside from in the 80s.
Or maybe I'm just hopeful that all the stories I hear from the old timers talking, that start "remember when" and "back 15 years ago" will come around again sometime.
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