If 'we' want flounder to continue to be around, there will eventually be limits on commercial quotas. Yes, they are the most egregious offenders but they have lobbyists.
Yes, you catching 'more than ever before' times that by thousands and thousands of others doing the same thing, combined with the ever increasing group that don't care about rules, laws, and quotas...and why should they....we defunded the police, we stood with that rhetoric and voted the same people back in. There is no real enforcement. The masses go out 'gigging' and stab to death a 1 in. undersized fish and throw it back, or cut it up right there...who knows. That has no affect when extrapolated by the millions?
All of that adds up to a declining fish population.
That is my data.
I caught 10x more recently than ever before but kept 2 the last 2 years because of the law. I released the rest.
There will always be people that don’t follow the rules and keep more than they should, but that seemingly small amount of rule breakers has practically no affect on the population as a whole as compared to the commercial industry. The rule breakers that we have now are the same rule breakers as 5-10 years ago. They are going to do it regardless of any law changes.
Commercial guys have a ton of by catch, thousands of pounds each time they go. Multiply that by each boat through the season and it’s exponentially greater than anything recreational folks could physically catch and keep beyond the limit and season.
In 2014 there was a recorded over 800,000 lbs of flounder landed by recreational fisherman over a course of a much longer season. By 2019 when season was closed and very restricted, those numbers were cut by more than half and had been gradually decreasing since 2014. Even the 2020 numbers were significantly less than the 800k lbs caught in 2014. So, for the last 10 years, recreational fishermen have gradually been decreasing the catch by about 10% each year. The DMF allows 70% of harvest to be by commercial fishermen for the next couple years and it adjusts to favor the recreational folks more after 2024. But that’s assuming the numbers are within “target” levels. The target can change and thus suspension of recreational levels.
A 30 day season with 1 fish per person per day limit won’t have a notable affect on the harvest as a whole even if everyone caught their max and fished every day, which is very unrealistic. I’d almost say removing 400k lbs of fish in a 30 day season is much more disruptive to the ecosystem versus the traditional, much longer season where 500k lbs are removed through a much longer season.
Again, harvest numbers by recreational fishermen have decreased by about 6-10% per year for the last 10 years but yet we still have a fish population issue? I’ll say it again, recreational harvest has reduced quite a bit the last 10 years and we still have a problem. It’s likely the problem isn’t the recreational fishermen.
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