UPDATE TO RECREATIONAL BFT RETENTION LIMITS

[Mr. Sandman]

Originally Posted by Raider Ronnie

Thats perfectly fair !
If you check out the numbers, recs took 700% more than the charters !

That depends on how you look at it. How many charter fishermen are there? How many recs are there? compute the number-of-fish/fishermen and not the number of fish/"user group" and I bet it shows a different picture. Why should each user group get an equal piece of the pie when there are far more of one than the other?

User groups will be the demise of everything fish IMO. Comm folks are exploiting this for all its worth (to them). There are fish and fishermen, period.
I hear the same thing with SB. Recs take far more than comms. Yeah of course on a user group basis because there are more recs. But on a per fishermen basis comms take way more. Further, most comm fishermen are also rec fishermen so they are fishing in both groups. From what I see, Quotas and usergroups are not working. There is a better way.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by Mr. Sandman

That depends on how you look at it. How many charter fishermen are there? How many recs are there? compute the number-of-fish/fishermen and not the number of fish/"user group" and I bet it shows a different picture. Why should each user group get an equal piece of the pie when there are far more of one than the other?

Bingo! Very, very well put. If there are 7x as many recreational trips than there are charter trips, then it would make sense that they would land significantly more fish.

Next, there will be arguments to reduce the rec Striped Bass take because the recreational guys take *insert sensational percentage here* more than the charters... but don't take mind to there being a fraction of the charter trips compared to recreational trips.

I fully support chartering and sustainable commercial R&R fishing. But when it comes time for regulation and setting quotas, there needs to be some sense to the system - fuzzy math based on politically motivated research will not yield an appropriately managed and sustainable fishery.