Summer Flounder fisherman ,bend over

I am not even a fluker but have watched how the fishery has become laughable! When I was much younger, we were able to fill a cooler with fluke of all sizes. We tossed many fish simply because they were just not worth cleaning.....much less than 13 inches or so. Then I watched as the regs tightened year after year and the fishery went from "hey we had a good day, dozens" to "Oh Boy we did real good, 6 of us came back with 4 keepers" What the hell is happening here?

Don't blame the commercial guys for the downward spiral we are in right now...............By that I mean, the yearly increase in size limits and correspondingly tighter regs the year that follows. That is because of a lawsuit brought by some enviro wackos with no stake in the fishery trying to make the NMFS follow the rebuilding plan, regardless of how incredibly successful it is. Just to make sure I am not misunderstood....DO blame the commercial fleet for destroying the fishery by raiding the shelf waters and removing all the breeding stock, and DO blame them for the skewed allocation because they had fished us out of the picture and lobbied us out of the process and DO blame the NMFS for being underhanded in the whole scheme

The 14 inch fluke thing for the commercial fleet does stick in my craw, but I understand the reason...........however, larger mesh would solve a lot of that.

Think about it, this is an inshore fish, that people are traveling 20 miles to catch! A few more miles and you are catching small BFT and Mako! Oh but you are only allowed one of each of them...........

The regs are flawed, the allocations are criminal, the catch estimates are just plain dumb! and the weight estimates based on them are even worse!

And people wonder why I don't even waste my time.

Marty,

Sometimes I wonder why you just can't leave well enough alone especially when you make me demonstrate in case after case that what I say comes right out of the Regulatory documentation and Industry news and trade publications.

I suggest that rather than wait for me to do all the exhaustive research AGAIN and dump it out here so you can sidestep it and ask me for more and different stuff, do the research yourself and dump it here.

Facts are:

The historic poundage split was 70-80 rec/20-30 Com.

The Com Fleet found the breeding stock in the shelf waters (very far, to answer your ?) and then netted them relentlessly.

Taking out the breeding stock will make a population collapse.

NMFS set the quota split after the Comm Fleet had made it almost impossible for the Rec fleet to catch a decent poundage.

The quota split was based on those skewed numbers

Comm size limit is 14 inch

Rec Size limit it higher and rediculously so in some areas.

Your mesh question was answered already

I don't care what the trip limit is, I am only concerned with the coastwide total Commercial quota.

To add, again, I don't have to know squat about draggin fluke to understand the regs, the population, the History, and other things that affect the landscape today. You just can't accept that someone who does not fish for a living can make a relatively intelligent argument about certain aspects of the subject.........You seem to always equate everyone with the touchy feely enviro-wackos who really have no clue in most cases. You remind me of a friend of mine who runs our BLDG Maint. unit. We in the Safety Office were seeing all sorts of crazy stuff wrong with scaffolding jobs. We were making inspections and writing reports about the dangers of the scaffold jobs (thankfully no one died) and we even offered to perform training. He asked me when the last time was that I set up a scaffold. I of course said that I hadn't done one before. He told me that because of that, I can't possibly know about setting one up properly. So like a dope I hired a contractor to do the training. What do you think happened? That contractor told him EXACTLY WHAT I HAD SAID EARLIER! The point is, Regs are regs, History is real, and you don't have to take a hands on part in every industry to make intelligent observations.

Bucktail, I think you misread my last sentence.....I have not given up on the fishery nor trying to make changes..........I just don't fish for fluke that is all. I spend my hard earned money and time pursuing the fish that EAT THOSE FLUKE!