Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Ollie
In case anyone is wondering, my rod and reel fishing experience goes back to when the LL'ers were still out front in full force. I had no problem catching them back then and I do believe that is when swords were deemed to be wiped out, decimated....utterly extinct....BULL$HIT!
I think that claims of 7 to 10 shots at fish a night, any time of year, any moon are just as preposterous and along the lines of the claims made by the deepdroppers of just getting it to the bottom and bam, your on. Which bears a striking similarity to the claims of how easy it is to plop your 10 balls in the water and catch a 1000lbs a night. All of the above do happen but with FAR less frequency than many have been suckered into believing. Don't be a hater because you were the Eskimo that bought somebody's ice.
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Well, I was getting bored with the General Threads anyway..
The PLL operated seasonally off the FEC right up until the closure because there were plenty of fish, had that not been true then economics would have prevailed.
One tournament off Miami 30 years ago did not produce fish and everyone threw in the towel and past judgement. I have read from several people on this forum that they continued to fish during the "PLL era" and did just fine.
My first year PLL'ing was 1978 and even then we had the knowledge to follow the fish to SC and then Georges Bank. To stay in one place 12 months of the year was to die a slow death. Sure we can always catch a fish or 2 year round in our area, same goes for kings, muttons and all the other resources.
I have been back in action in this area for the past 4 years and I can say without a doubt that the number of R&R strikes has decreased on average. I think that is certainly related to the effort being applied, that said we must examine how many fish actually are candidates to be caught per night.
Example: If every fish were a candidate each night there would be nothing to catch the following day, unless these fish are continually moving in and out of our area. I think we have enough tag information to determine that a high percentage of fish hang here until maturity. We know that with 500 hooks in the water during a specific moon phase the catch rate will remain consistant each night unless altered by effects such as environmental conditions. Simply said on the FEC during specific seasons there is a CPA (catch per area), that number is divided by the efforts of the fleet. Last year the CPA may have been 2-3 fish per degree of Lat. or Long., this year it may be 1-2 per night and next year possibly 3 to 4. That theory will remain consistant fishing the way our fleet does (picking a position before leaving the dock), the variable only being those who are out there every night and can stay with a productive edge of water.
In all the years we caught swordfish I never believed that we depleted a body of fish that we were working on. The catch rate remained consistant until the moon phase or other conditions changed, even when making 45 continuous PLL sets on a specific body of water. When another vessel would begin closely working that same area the CPUE would decrease while the CPA would increase slightly due to increased effort. This does not apply to fishing a tight temp break in the sub-tropics.