Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Sandman
625 was what were weighed in...you had thousands of fishermen fishing "because of the contest" for 5 months. The catch and release mortality (driven by the event) exceeds what was weighed in.
Most fishermen admit," if I was not in the event, I would not fish as often or as hard", that is why many of them they join. Most trips do not produce a weigh able fish but most likely they produce dead fish either taken home or die due to injury. If you break off a yo-yo'ed or gut hooked fish and it dies, it is an unweighted dead fish.
Numbers aside, for me they are walking a fine line claiming they are conservation minded tourney...yet allow commercially harvested fish that are headed to market for money to be entered. This is not conservation. Also, the on-line aspect is so poorly run you can not see what size fish it takes to make the board. This should be almost real time, certainly no more than 24hours after it is caught.
All that said...the impact of ANY TOURNY is small IMO. Even if they killed "Thousands" of fish in the name of the striper cup, that is small compared to the coast-wide killing from commercial and recs. Better steps could be taken to reduce the overall kill.
Other questions I have: Is this a non-profit event? Exactly how many people fish it? Where does the $ go? Are the prizes bought or donated? Do they give back to the community or fishery? I looked on the website for the info, all this is a secret.
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I am sure that the OTW people make a nice amount of money for the tournament and that is fine with me. I like the guys there and they work really hard to make the tournament fun.
To your other point, I still do not buy the mortality rate that you and NOAA think is the case on released fish. I really think that we would see fish floating all over the place if it were the case.
Maybe we should start a new thread, I think we are straying quite a bit from what this thread was meant for.
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