|
I was at the CT meeting last night and even though turnout was a lot lower than I expected the recreational fishermen that were there were almost unanimously for taking the 25% cut in year one and most were in favor of one fish at 32”. The charter boats of course didn’t want to take a cut to one fish and claimed it would put them out of business. I had to just shake my head at some of these guys especially one of the very vocal charter guys at the meeting that said that his striped bass catch numbers were down 90% this year in the sound and then a few minutes later he stated that he was against any taking kind of substantial cuts in the bag limit.
An important point from last night’s meeting is that there is what was explained as a “mistake” in the proposed cuts to the commercial sector. The proposed cuts on the commercial side are based off of quota numbers that were never met instead of actual harvest data from 2013. As the amendment stands now the “cuts” on the commercial side would result in a 13% increase in landings over the 2013 harvest assuming the commercial sector reached the new quotas.
|
Threaded Mode