2010 NJ fluke season Bass Barn vote

"Are you willing to risk fewer fish to keep, more throw backs, a higher probability of exceeding your quota, risking more severe regulations the following year for just the CHANCE at a slightly longer season, knowing they could easily shut you down long before it is over anyway?"

Basically, what this boils down to is the claim that we should not trust the scientist who put together the alternatives. A NJ scientist (Tony Baum, principal biologist for the NJ Bureau of marine Fisheries) put together alternative regulations to meet the 2010 quota. I don't think we should have to say: we don't trust the scientist who figured out the alternatives, so lets pick the most conservative option.

If you really want to reduce throwbacks, lets make the season 2 weeks long and make C&R fishing illegal outside of those 2 weeks. That way we would be certain of not exceeding the quota and would drastically reduce throwback mortality.

I thought this whole exercise was to try to pick a set of regulations that would be the most attractive to the largest number of people. The vast majority (over 80%) of the people answering this poll want a longer season. The frustrating part for me is that since we are not scientists, we need to be given alternatives that are actually alternatives for meeting the quota.

Fine, if someone will tell me what the "real" options are I will offer my opinion on which I prefer. The memo lists 6 options. If there are really only 2 options (the 2 with the 18 inch limit) I prefer the one with the bag of 6 as adding a couple days to the beginning of the season in return for dropping the bag to 4 does not seem like a good deal to me.

If the options that involve going to an 18.5 minimum size to signifacantly lengthen the season are not real options as argued because they will almost certainly result in an overage, the memo should say that and not list them as options.

I dont think its a fair position to just say that other peoples' opinion's are invalid because you have been fishing forever and you are certain that increasing the length of the season is going to produce an overage. I only ever said that if the choice is one of the 6 options in the memo, I'd like to have the longer season, as most who have responded to this poll said. The problem seems to me to be that we need someone to tell us what the real options are.