Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyD
Since I'm so far off base... then how do you explain why the US is repeatedly below their quota for BFT?
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It's a bait issue - midwater pair trawlers have decimated all the inshore bait (macs and herring) to the point where most off the giants that normally summer in the gulf of maine keep moving north to canada (where they outlawed mid-water trawling and have ass-loads of bait).
Over the last several years the Canadians have had so many fish that they are filling their quotas in days (PEI lasted less than a week last year) - they are also getting smaller (presumably U.S. fish) earlier than they ever had. Canada was always huge fish late in the year (700 was small and it was all OCT/Nov).
Now they have 500lb fish in July.
If we fix our bait situation, we will fix our Giant fishery.
The overall #'s of fish haven't really changed, its the geographic distribution. Giants don't care about border lines, they just want something to eat.
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