Conservation Conversation

[Another Grand]

Pressed send twice

[The BEAST]

I'm going to preface this post with an apology for the length of my previous post.

Originally Posted by Another Grand

As far as making the most sense on the forum, my entire understanding of the fishery, and what it faces has been derived from Ron, Vinny, Col Klink, Ollie, the Prince, Quack and everybody elses debates, and a few friend on the sidelines.

Johnny,

Exactly my point! If and when there is no confrontation or debate, none of those opinions ever surface. I, like you, learned more from the above mentioned people than I ever had a clue of. Tim never seems to post anymore but as time is passing by I can easily see why. I now understand why other charter captains remain silent as well.

Sometimes I feel I must play devils advocate to get the information flowing. Vinnie and I went 15 rounds in a heavyweight bout last year and he opened my eyes to a different point of view, as I did his. I'm not on common ground with Vinnie but I am more understanding and much better for it. I've come a long way and have a long way to go.

As far as the rest of your post, I concur. The only discrepancy I see in your thinking is that of the release fishing. Any and all release fishing will have mortality. We are confronted every day with release fishing on most species we encounter. It is not 100% survival fishing but the survival rate is much better than the fish box.

[Tal-Jen]

I am simply trying to get people to think also. As it was said before a healthly debate has many new points surfacing. How would you feel if someone came on here and said that all charter boat captains swindled their customers out of fish, cheated them, and lied to them about the business that they were in? This type of thing hapened not to long ago in miami. Just for the record I do not only fish for swords, I also fish for food to FEED THE MASSES. I do fish for grunts, kingfish, shark, snapper and pompano, just to name a few species. Most of the snapper I catch is for the ethnic market, being small yellowtails, mangrove, lanes, etc. I would get a much higher rate of pay on the larger snapper, but I do choose to FEED THE MASSES.

[The BEAST]

Unfortunately, the charter business DOES have the black eye or stigma of being just as you noted. There are still many that are just as you described. That is why I strive to be so squeaky honest and conservation minded in voice and practice.

I do NOT sell any of my catch. The only fish that hits my fish box are those that the customer wants for themselves and all are within sport size/limits. Occasionally Devon or I will throw one in the box for our dinner. Matter of fact I remember when I first entered into real conservation conversation (no pun intended) on this forum, I told everyone that I had a boat policy of 1 Swordfish per trip limit on The BEAST. I received a lot of flack about that due to the "reach the quota" mindset for justifying the need to kill 3 fish. Now I hear many on here relaying the same thoughts of "why do we need more than 1 fish?" "We don't need to feed the neighbors!" If you read some of my posts from over a year ago you will see that I posted those exact thoughts then.

I do NOT partake in any facet of the taxidermy business either. I will take measurements of fish if the customer has the desire to have a mount. I do NOT recommend any taxidermy company.

Most of my customers convey their appreciation of my conservation efforts and fishing ethics.

If you do indeed fish for other than high $$$$ species then I commend and support you as a commercial fisherman. I have never been anti-commercial in that respect.

[LIGHTINING STRYKER]

regergitating the same ol cocka da backa

[tunaman81]

Originally Posted by quack quack

That has been a tough call in the past.While we all know the 2 sides of this debate.1. remove fish before they breed2.Remove fish after they have breed a few times.I really have no idea about this.Maybe Tunaman or Prof O could shed some light on this.Sorry I forgot to call you on Fri Matt.

I would definately say the best option is to kill smaller, immature fish. The larger a fish gets, the more eggs it can produce. A 200lb fish will produce less eggs than a 300lb fish, a 300 less than a 500lb fish etc. The fish producing 35 million eggs (the quoted max that swordfish can produce) are going to be exceptionally large females (if I would have to venture a guess, it would probably be fish over 700-800lbs).
It doesn't end there. The larger a fish is, the better the quality of the eggs. Larger fish tend to produce larger, more viable eggs.