 Riptide Sportfishing & Whale Watching I will try to make it clear as to what "shelf fish are. I try to keep it as simple as possible but it is such a complicated matter and so many different user groups. The three categories describing ground fish are 1 nearshore (out to 20 fathoms), 2 shelf (20 to 600 fathoms), Slope ( outside 600 fathoms). there are certain fish that can be caught nearshore and different ones on the shelf. The yellow eye, Bocaccio, canary are considered to be shelf species. Whereas fish like china, gopher and cabbazone are considered nearshore. There are a whole slew of fish that are caught out on the slope that we don't even see ( thornyhead, splotnose etc). Which is why they are still allowed to drag out there( slope) because the recreational angler never accesses this fishery. After these meeting this year I think there will be a big drop off in the draggers. As it stands now with there quotas they are allowed to only fish for a couple of days in what is called block time (two month periods) then they have to tie up for the remainder of the two months. There days are numbered and there is discussion of buying back there vessels, which the government convinced them to buy through there grant and other packages which were offered back when there was the thought of the fish as an unlimited resource. Boy how wrong they were!! The one big thing that really needs to be stressed by you , ME and everyone who fishes for rock fish is that we have the opening of November and December within our grasp if we DO NOT CATCH CANARY'S! The Canary's live on the edges of the reefs always have ,always will. With the dire need to have the "Marine Recreational Fisherman Field Survey" (MRFFS) examine the way that they look at the data. To say there are 150 partyboats in norther California is totally ludicrous!!!!!!But that is what they think. They also do what is called a "phone survey" where they call people at random and ask them questions about there fishing on the ocean. My customers everyday hold up a fish and holler "hay Smitty what is this and can i keep it"? Now how can someone who is talking on the phone supposed to answer that question with any reliability?? The big portion of the data is going to come from the Partyboat's new log books which came out last year listing quite a few of the different kinds of rock fish. They are still in the process of setting up and receiving this data. I think it will show a truer picture of what is really happening on the ocean. We need to push for a reorganization of the whole MRFFS data and how they use it. Okay ill stop here and hope that this makes sense to you as it is a complex issue! Thanks for having an ear for the recreational angler. I hope with the help of the media we can work to get better data used to our benefit! |
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