ZAMism

[fisheyed]

I am posting this in response to the numerous threads related to rockfish status and the upcoming C+R. Zam has stated in the past that he believes that species other than the rockfish are in much greater need of help. I have to adgree with this. Forget the past numbers of rock and the projection charts and whatnot. If you went out today in the bay you almost undoubtedly would be targerting rockfish and given recent reports you would have a good shot at catching a few. What I am proposing is that the current bays health is out of balance. The rock are plentiful in comparison to other species. Why is this? I propose it is because the overall health of the bay cannot support high levels of multiple species at this time. The rockfish seem to be able to surveive in the current condition. I don't care how you slice it more fish are being taken out of the water/ mortality of many species is greater than the bay can support. It would be wonderful if we had water conditions and forage species ( menhaden, shad,etc) so we could have co-existing populations of apex predatory species ( weakfish, flounder, seabass, rock, stugon etc) that we had before. As rec anglers what can we do? Advocate new waste treatment facilities, fight omega, increase oyster farming, reducing uban runoff, decreasing our footprint i.e. lower bag limits, etc. What won't work? In fighting, regulations that are next to impossible to enforce, passing the blame and ignoring the fact that right now we are in the midst of a great fall run. Take someone new out with you to experience the bay. They just may fall in love and when a vote comes up they will vote to protect the bay and not simply make life cheeper/ easier.

[Francis]

That is a good call. Water quality is a key.

Oysters and Menhadden. CCA Pax river has the right idea. . .

[philk999]

Clean water and renewed focus on Oysters would help this bay greatly. Lets hope it comes ooon.

[paxfish]

So, a few items here:

ZAM-ism - remarkably, he and I have been nodding our heads in unison on most of the C&R discussion going on.

That said, we still disagree vehemently on the rockfish population issues.

Here's why:

ASMFC came back and said that based on the Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB), that rockfish are not overfished. I say their assumptions are bad. To understand why, you need to know a little bit about SSB.

SSB includes only fish over 7 years old. Fish with spawning potential. We've seen significant decline in numbers of these fish over the last 5 or 6 years. When I queried ASMFC 2 years ago with my concern, they responded that they were banking on the super spawn of 2001 and 2003 to reverse the trend. In fact, the most recent numbers show that a soft landing was achieved in the SSB due to these fish. The SSB leveled out.

But what of the overall numbers? Well, SSB is very deceptive. It is based on the WEIGHT of the spawners over 7 years old. Not their population numbers. And guess what? A 14 year old fish does not weigh merely twice as much as a 7 years fish. It weighs nearly four times as much! Now, they carry a lot more eggs, so if we get a good YOY, we should have decent numbers of eggs to take advantage of it. Then 7 years later, those can be added to the SSB. But right now, we have a huge slug of big fish in the SSB, and not much behind them. The "puppy in the python."

So, right now, the SSB estimate is greatly skewed by this imbalance in the numbers. The SSB today, if it were the same as 6 years ago, likely only represents HALF the numbers of fish. It could be as little as 1/4th! Worse yet, we don't have any nice YOY populations from 3,4 or 5 years ago waiting in the wings. Think about it, right now, there are some fish scattered around the upper bay in a couple of key places, and ONE big pod of fish that's been getting the hell pounded out of it off of Chesapeake Beach. And a smattering across from PLO. But you could run all the way from Solomon's to the Gas Docks and not see a breaker. It is November for crying out loud! We should be able to walk across the schooling rockfish!

Right now, we are enjoying some really nice fish in the bay that are leftover from a couple of very successful spawns in the 1990's. And they are partially bolstered by the 2001/2003 YOY that survived the netting off to VA/NC coast, the commercial poaching, and all the other pressures. But, I submit, that this will be a very short-lived blip on the graph. Those 2001/2003 fish? Our saviors? They been hit hard by harvest pressure. Not to mention Myco.

Politically, this is a very sticky situation at ASMFC. They are about to manage the rockfish population right into moratorium. Again.

When I say a storm is coming, this is what I'm talking about.

Francis - I'm all about water quality as you know. I spend a whole lot of time working on it. That said, water quality has not significantly changed during the last 30 years. During that time, we've had boom and bust on different fishes, and a lot of the time, we've had great abundance of many species at once and together (Rockfish, weakfish, flounder, perch etc.) All independent of water quality. And there's been a ton of menhaden around the last several years with very few predators working them.

I conclude, fairly I think, that the issues we are about to face have little to do with water quality or bait availability. Overharvest is the culprit here.

[philk999]

Amen Chris. The YOY index has been dropping off for the last few years and while we are still not at the levels that triggered the moratorium we are well on our way there.

They need to absolutely move back Opening day, do something with VA and the Carolina's winter fishery and clean up the water. But what are we fighting about C&R:eek2: