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I understand and agree with your guys point, but I think the actual effect is not as big as you think (although ANY reduction is good by me).
The actual mortality numbers for 2008 estimate 2.2 million fish were kept recreationally, and about 1 million fish (950,000) were released and died. Since many anglers do not catch 2 fish or keep 2 fish (and since the recreational community does not fish to a hard quota determined season), a reduction to a 1 fish limit would not automatically reduce the recreational kept number to 1.1 million. Rather it would probably be more like 1.5 million (a guess). The release mortality would increase a bit (@60,000 fish) since 8% of those extra 700,000 released fish would die.
That means dropping the recreational limit to one fish would reduce the total recreational kill from 3.2 million fish, to 2.5 million......a drop of about 20-25%. To reduce the recreational kill further would require a size limit increase as well.
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