Commercials are taking all the flounder ? period!

Draggers are taking all the flounder

I strongly agree that the draggers are taking all the flounder. Go into a fish market and they got hundreds of flounder for sale. Look in the newspapers and every supermarket advertises flounder for sale. A couple of powerful fish markets are shipping our flounder all around the globe and us fisherman get practically nothing. This is our resourse , why can't we get some flounder ?
The same thing applies to whiting. I haven't caught a whiting since the early 90's. The draggers take them all and send them to Europe. Sound fair ?
New York state will do nothing because NY is controlled by upstater's and taxes and Jobs mean more to them than our resources. How would they like it if commercial fishing resumed on their beloved lakes ?
Regarding Flounder, the dec wrongly states that recreational fishermen are responsible for the decline in flounder. There wrong because nobody fishes for flounder in the ocean. We catch flounder that came from the ocean into the bay. The commercial draggers are working on flounder all year long. How long do recreational fishermen fish for them ? March, April, October, November and mainly on the weekend. The commercial fishermen have depleted almost every species of fish and its safe to assume that they are responsible for decline in Flounder.

you are wrong

Listen to your remark Sunnyday?
You say that commercials are to blame yet the catch for commercial fishermen has gone up?
Gee if there to blame why is there catch increasing? If they were hurting the species wouldn?t there catch quota go down? The reason is there are offshore fisheries that produce most of the Flounder caught commercially. The draggers DONT come into the bays!!! Getting back to the Stripers you have an Eating machine that eats every type of fish from Crabs, to sea robins and clams. Virginia has been blaming the strippers for there lack of crabs in the bays. Seals forget about them. There is 1 seal to every 1 million bass. Now that bass are protected there are no regulations to limit them in anyway, and being such an aggressive fish they will over time do more and more damage if not regulated!!
How could these stocks rebound even if they are protected having all those bass chasing them? Global warming has made our weather rise to all time highs about 10% warmer each year. You know what that means the Striper?s are not all migrating. I know people who have been catching stripers all year round for the past 2 or 3 years. Not just schoolies like the past but teen and up fish. So that means when all the bait leaves the bay and the water gets cold. The Flounder and herring move in. Well Mr. Sunny what would you prefer a pizza or a prime rib? I guess the bass would choose FLOUNDER!! That?s right. Yes over fishing hurts! yes commercial guys are sometimes close to the beach (no names). But this bass problem is something which will hurt other species and not just flounder. When?s the last time you caught a nice big pergal inshore? Must be a couple of years? Know why? Because stripers love them too. I?m sure by now a lot of you have discovered the striper reef fishing. Besides the clams what do you think there eating? Pergals, and the occasional sea bass. And don?t come back with that people want porgals more then black fish now which is true. Remember by us regulating bass we intervened with nature. I know we are trying to make it right but sometimes the right thing turns out bad? So the answer is to regulate Bay flounder, Stop draggers from the 3mile limit, Increase the bass limit. Also the size on bass. Because our bigger fish are the ones mostly being kept by anglers. And get some Politicians in office that have a clue as to Regulations. That is the biggest problem you got A___hole?s that don?t have a clue. You need a experienced person that knows and understands the fisheries, and not some money man just wanting votes. If you could prove me wrong then DO IT! Give me facts not opinions.
http://home.earthlink.net/~steven0010/

Togmaster,

The commercial catch has gone up because they?ve gotten better at it over the years. They don?t have to be fishing in the bays because they?re catching them before they get a chance to get into the bay. And then they get them again as they leave the bays. Unless of course flounder don?t leave the bays, something I would find hard to believe.

And I don?t agree with the ?bass eating everything? theory. In past five or so years bass have been blamed for eating everything from all the blue claw crabs to bluefish to all the weakfish, menhaden, herring, mackerel and even all the little striped bass. The even ate all the shad; of course no one is really sure how that happened as the shad disappeared when the bass population was on the verge of collapse. Of course the commercial shad fishery had nothing to do with that, it was the bass.

I think the commercial fishery needs to be further restricted to allow the flounder in and out of the bays and to stop fishing them over the winter months. And if what you suggest is true, that the fish are being caught offshore, then there should be little resistance from the commercial fishery on such a proposal. But the sad truth is the last piece of dragger legislation was water down so bad at the end that it resulted in the commercial catch going up.

If they?re not catching them inshore then why not give it up?

noreast

I agree that the two stock theory is a bit vague. From my experience working on party boats, we would see fish in the spring that recently migrated into the bays. From what I was taught, "new" fish have somewhat of a rough feel on the bottom side (white side) caused by migrating fairly long distances from the offshore winter grounds. Most of those fish were skinny from traveling so far, and it seemed like a majority of those flounder were males. I know because I got "squirted" often enough unhooking the fish for my customers. Anyway, this was back in the early to mid 80's. I don't know how much things have changed since then.(except there being a lot less fish) We would see fish that were "residents"...fish that seemed to stay in the back bays year round. For the most part, these fish tended to be big females loaded with roe. So this is why I don't really by the two stock theory too much. There are fish that migrate offshore in the late fall/winter, and fish that take up residence in our bays year round, and I do believe they intermix with each other. The fish the Commercial guys are netting never have a chance to make it into the back bays to spawn. The same thing happened with the fluke in the 80's. That fishery was nearly dead. There would be a line of draggers working a few miles off the beach and the new bodies of fluke working their way inshore never made it into the bays. What's the answer? I suppose moving them offshore and giving these fish a chance to move into the bays would be a start. I'm sure there are many other factors involved, (global warming, predation, etc...) but we need to start somewhere. K, I'm off my soapbox.

Maybe this will answer your question George?

Hope this will explain the stock theroy.
The winter flounder, blackback, or lemon sole, Pseudopleuronectes
americanus, is distributed in the Northwest Atlantic from Labrador to
Georgia. Abundance is highest from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to
Chesapeake Bay. Winter flounder may attain sizes up to 64 cm (25 in.)
total length. The diet consists primarily of benthic invertebrates.
Movement patterns are generally localized. Winter flounder undertake
small-scale migrations into estuaries, embayments, and saltwater ponds
in winter to spawn, subsequently moving to deeper water during
summer. Winter flounder tend to return to the same spawning locations
in consecutive years. Restricted movement patterns, and differences in
growth, meristic, and morphometric characteristics suggest that
relatively discrete local groups exist.

Tagging and meristic studies indicate separate groups of winter flounder
north of Cape Cod, east and south of Cape Cod, and on Georges Bank.
Three groups are recognized for assessment purposes: Gulf of Maine,
Southern New England - Middle Atlantic, and Georges Bank.

Winter flounder are typically exploited in coastal locations, although
offshore shoal areas, particularly Georges Bank and Nantucket Shoals,
support important winter flounder fisheries. The principal commercial
fishing gear used is the otter trawl. Recreational catches are significant,
especially in the southern parts of the range. U.S. commercial and
recreational fisheries are managed under the New England Fishery
Management Council's Multispecies Fishery Management Plan (FMP)
and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Fishery
Management Plan for Inshore Stocks of Winter Flounder. Under the
Northeast Multispecies FMP winter flounder are included in a complex
of 15 groundfish species which has been managed by time/area
closures, gear restrictions, minimum size limits and, since 1994, direct
effort controls including a moratorium on permits and and days-at-sea
restrictions under Amendments 5 and 7 to the FMP. Amendment 9
established rebuilding targets, and defines control rules which specify
target fishing mortality rates and corresponding rebuilding time
horizons. The goal of the management program is to reduce fishing
mortality to levels which will allow stocks within the complex to
initially rebuild above minimum biomass thresholds, and ultimately to
remain at or near target biomass levels.

Total winter flounder landings in 1998 was 5,500 mt, among the lowest
on record.

The big boys wont let it happen?

Read this!
Fish regulators say no thanks to N.J. trawling research
By JACK KASKEY Staff Writer, (609) 272-7213, E-Mail

Federal fishing regulators have rejected New Jersey-funded trawl research that suggested the government might
be under estimating fish populations.

Each spring and fall, the National Marine Fisheries Service trawls the ocean bottom for fish, using the catch to
estimate how many fish are in the sea. Those estimates are used to set regulations for commercial and
recreational fishers.

New Jersey fishermen have long suspected the government boats undercount some of their favorite fish, so last
year they raised about $150,000 in state and private money to research their theory.

The research plan, developed by Eric Powell, director of Rutgers University's Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory
in Bivalve, Cumberland County, involved trawling beside a government boat during the spring and fall surveys.

Powell's side-by-side trawls aboard the commercial boat Jason & Danielle landed far more fish than the regulators.

Last spring's catch of summer flounder, for instance, was 55 times what the NMFS boat caught. The porgy catch
also was multiple times larger.

But NMFS won't be using the data in its population estimates, said Michael P. Sissenwine, director of the NMFS
Northeast Fisheries Service Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass.

Sissenwine said the research was rushed and lacked all the "success factors" that are required for cooperative
research to be successful. One of those factors is a true collaboration between scientists and fishermen on the
study's objectives, planning, implementation and analysis.

"The hurry-up approach lacked proper planning for success," Sissenwine said Tuesday. "There have to be realistic
expectations about the feasible outcomes, about what the data means and what we are hoping to achieve."

There have never been clear, realistic and shared expectations, he said.

"The mere fact that a commercial vessel with a much bigger net catches more fish is not a surprise to anybody,"
Sissenwine said. "It's hard to assess the value of the data they've gathered so far."

Rutgers researchers had hoped to replicate last year's side-by-side trawls this year, but they didn't present their
proposal until March, when the NMFS spring survey was beginning.

"There simply was not enough planning in advance to make this thing successful," Sissenwine said.

Powell did not return a telephone call left Monday at his Haskin lab.

Recreational fishermen are upset that NMFS has rejected New Jersey's research, said James A. Donofrio, executive
director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance.

"This was put together by some of the best scientists we have in New Jersey" Donofrio said. "For him to dismiss
that and say it wasn't done properly, that's a lot of hogwash."

NMFS regulations affect jobs in the commercial and recreational sectors, yet the agency doesn't seem interested in
research that could improve their population estimates, he said.

"They are using a lot of voodoo," Donofrio said.

Dan Cohen, owner of commercial docks in Cape May and Point Pleasant Beach, said commercial fishermen are
disappointed the research won't be going ahead this year, but the industry is committed to future research
projects with NMFS.

Sissenwine said his agency is a strong advocate of cooperative research. He even testified before Congress on the
issue last December.

NMFS previously has engaged in cooperative research that resulted in management changes for scallops, monkfish,
surf clams and ocean quahogs, he said.

Nothing prevents New Jersey's trawl research from resuming next year, he said.

"I have no doubt that if we got good data, it would be used in stock assessments," Sissenwine said.

Last year's research cost about $150,000 in state and private money. The state portion came from the New Jersey
Fisheries Information and Development Center, which was created last year with a $500,000 budget. The private
portion came from the National Fisheries Institute's Scientific Monitoring Committee, a seafood industry group
chaired by Cohen.