I’ve seen a large hammerhead wrecking a school of tarpon off the beach in Georgia. What makes you think a white shark can’t catch a 30lb redfish?
I’ve seen a large hammerhead wrecking a school of tarpon off the beach in Georgia. What makes you think a white shark can’t catch a 30lb redfish?
Don’t want to start an argument but charter businesses and fishing tournaments definitely puts a major strain on fish populations.
Be proactive about improving public waterfowl habitat in South Carolina. It's not going to happen by itself, and our help is needed. We have the potential to winter thousands of waterfowl on public grounds if we fight for it.
Large schools of large drum in cold water.... Easy pickings.
Incidentally, they are both hanging out in the same zone/depth off the beach in the winter.
\"I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A small bird will drop dead frozen from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.\" <br />D.H. LAWRENCE
We only watch that air jaws shit
I agree with a large portion of this, while I also get trying to make a job outta doing something
you love in the beautiful outdoors. Alot of hypocrites in this profession when it comes to "stressing" fish
and they knowingly and unknowingly show the spots (no pun intended) to Yankees that then go out and buy boats and
are fishing on their own with their Yankee transplanted neighbors and cousins who then want to move here and buy a boat and fish
Lot of good discussion here. I’ll try to chime in on a few specific posts and will check back later, but headed out on the water.
Shark fishing is open…the commercial shark quotas have consistently been underharvested for the last 5 years...there needs to be a market for there to be a fishery. You can open it up all you want but the economics aren't there. Right now only 32% of the large coastal shark quota market and 12.5% of the small coastal shark market have been harvested, it used to close by July. Fin bans in states have made it tougher to sell product...and fin buyers seem to be unscrupulous individuals who keep landing in jail for other offenses, the fins are the most valuable part of the fish. Until you start seeing shark served as a sustainable meal in restaurants the commercial shark fishery will not bounce back. The narrative needs to change here, fishing shark stocks can be fished sustainably, and some species are quite good to eat, but no restaurant is going to do it and risk protesters gathering outside their front door. The narrative change will need to start at a consumer level.
That said, while sharks are definitely increasingly targeting recreational catch, their populations are not exploding enough to be the culprit here.
Good point…good fisherman and fishermen who spend a lot of time on the water will continue to catch fish in a declining population. But some areas that traditionally did, no longer have schools, and some large schools are much smaller. The best habitat will continue to hold fish, while suboptimal habitat will hold less or none, and some schools are completely gone from areas.
DNR is proposing no such thing…as of now, fishermen/guides are being asked to take the lead here. Better practices when it comes to handling, restraint when it comes to what size you target, and when you target them can help, restraint in how many you catch too. Big reds are pretty robust to capture, but maybe not in July and August when waters are hot/low dissolved oxygen and they are spawning. Maybe those fish that are captured then don’t die, but there are sublethal affects too…maybe they skip spawning, or don’t spawn as frequently. That’s something that’s really hard for us to measure, but we know there are definitely effects.
Unfortunately these trends are from Winyah Bay down through Hilton Head, even the ACE which sees the lowest fishing pressure is matching these trends, but population centers are definitely seeing the most dramatic effects.
Some evidence that they are target big reds, but I don’t think it has anything to do with trends we are seeing. There’s been two necropsies of white sharks in the last 15 years one in SC, one in NC. Both stomachs were empty…with the exception of big red drum scales in both fish…so they are certainly trying to eat them…but it’s likely a fill in meal…marine mammals (whales in particular) are still the preferred prey. One whale will feed 100+ white sharks for 3-4 months.
I’d respectively disagree here…that said there’s also forces that are affecting fish outside of direct angling. There’s some evidence that climate could be affecting spawning success, predominant SW winds used to turn to NE winds earlier in the fall, now that happens later, there’s some thought that a SW wind is more likely to push spawned eggs to the ocean while a NE pushes them into the estuaries.
That said, the data show there are simply less 2 and 3 year old fish than there used to be, 1 yo fish aren’t making it…and recreational fishing is the likely scenario. With the increased fishing pressure, even with very high catch and release, the post-release mortality those fish experience puts current landings and mortalities at the same or higher levels than at the peak of the fishery. Hence the reason that public outreach is the preferred method to help the fishery at this time, the greatest gains can come here, reducing post-release mortality through better handling, increasing angler awareness, peer pressure etc are going to be the most effective at this point.
Great points, duckcrazed.
See, yall thought I was insane for saying that the practice of catching 40-50-60 fish in a day wasn't the right thing to do. Yea, I worded it a bit stronger than that and I probably could have chosen better words. I am who I am. But even if DNR's 8% hooking mortality rate is correct, which I believe is low, on a 50 redfish day, you killed 4 redfish for no reason.
Extrapolate that across an entire year of guides, recreational anglers, and all the social media goofballs, and that's a lot of dead redfish. Not to mention the effect that has when we're talking about the larger, breeding redfish.
You know how in the Summer the DNR has a rule that you aren't even allowed to attempt to catch more than 3 striped bass in one day on Lake Murray? I like that rule. Simply because we know recreationally catching and releasing so many fish leads to killing some number of them unnecessarily. I don't think we need to close a "season" or even change the limit, though I'd like the slot to shift up 3-4".
We should probably stop with the 50 redfish days. The guides are doing this a lot as they mostly use live bait with multiple rods in the water at once for their clients. They'll force catch and release down your throat as they killed more fish that day then they would have if they kept a few fish and left the school alone after that. And it isn't just the guides. Some recreational anglers are good enough to do this repeatedly.
I don’t think 50 redfish trips are as common as you think. Most guided trips are 4 hours. Tide and conditions aren’t always optimal for producing a bite like that. Not to mention there are a lot of unskilled anglers going on these trips. Now yes from September- December 50 fish days are much more likely especially with good anglers. Through the summer a lot of guides are targeting sharks/ big reds. Late fall many are more so targeting trout. You can’t blame the whole situation on the guide community. Yes they play a big part. Most guides I know or have fished with throughout the southeast are conservation minded and really do seem to care about their fishery. Especially saltwater guides. Freshwater guides seem to be much more driven by catching the limit and putting it in the box. I agree with you on not sitting in one hole and bailing fish after fish. I like to catch a few from one spot and then move on to another. It’s figuring them out and finding new fish that’s addicting to me more so than actually reeling them in.
Certainly not entirely a guide issue but are they not the ones 'so concerned" but yet fish non-stop and
are paid to teach/show newbies how to "catch more fish"?
Folks I know that hire guides or looking for a guide recommendation usually say they are doing so
to learn where and how and yet guides are "concerned".
I am pretty sure the concern comes from worried they won't be able to make a buck off the fishery.
Sure there are some people looking for knowledge or spots but I’d guess the vast majority of people booking trips at least in the Charleston area are tourist from out of town just looking to get out on the water, or your big money local guy that would rather go with a guide than have his own skiff. And yes it’s natural to worry about the way in which you make a living. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care about the fishery.
Never understood the draw to catch bull reds just for a pic knowing nothing you catch are legal to keep. I don’t know for a fact but percentage of accidentally killed redfish is probably higher than catching them on shell banks and docks.
"Check your premise." Dr. Hugh Akston
The notion to pass more laws and control what free people can and can’t do as the default answer is a huge problem in this country. Comparing mud motors and spot lock trolling motors is apples and oranges. Why don’t we ban live bait and only allow fly fishing since those make fishing easier. While we are at it let’s make deer hunting archery only and only allow 410s for dove hunting
"Check your premise." Dr. Hugh Akston
I get what you're saying but do we need to continue to make things even easier for us to hunt and fish? At some point we have to say that's enough technology so we can give the animals a fair chance.
A lot of people, if the technology existed, would gladly have a remote controlled rifle attached to their cellular game camera, pointed at their 200 pounds of corn, so they could just push a button from their couch and kill a deer when it shows up. Then show off the pics on social media of the big buck they "hunted" with some stupid hashtag like #CountryBoyCanSurvive.
Now that I think about it, might be something I should invent and become a millionaire. Between SC and Texas, I could retire in a month.
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