Fish Report 3/14/13

Fish Report 3/14/13

Saturday

Jimmy's

Long Tog - Saturday & Sunday - 3/16 & 17 - Cbass Closed - 6AM to 6PM - $150.00 - 16 Passengers Sells Out - Even Very Good Anglers Could Be Skunked - Intrepid Anglers Only! (see opening paragraph below)

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Reservations Required @ 410 - 520 - 2076.

LEAVE YOUR BEST POSSIBLE CONTACT NUMBER - Weather Cancelations Are Common - I Make Every Attempt To Let Clients Sleep In If The Weather's Not Going Our Way..

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No Live Fish Leave The Boat - Dead & Bled - Period. (I Believe The Live-Fish Black Market Is Hurting This Fishery)

All Regulations Observed - 4 Fish @ 16 Inches.

Green Crabs Provided. You're welcome to bring any hard bait: Lobster, White Crab, Blue Crab, Hermit Crab: Even Gulp Crab .. No Squid, No Clam = No Dogfish.

Be A Half Hour Early - We Like To Leave Early.

Clients Arriving Late Will See The West End Of An East Bound Boat..

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Will Open Reservations For Summer Sea Bass When (the really nice people at) NOAA & NMFS (who I never-ever bicker or quarrel with) Have Given Approval To The Council's Sea Bass Plan.

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3,912 "Oyster Castle" Reef Blocks By The Rail. (Now 1,144 @ Jimmy's Reef)

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Greetings All,

Don't like how Monday's weather looks now. Have cancelled that trip and opened up Saturday. Naturally I gave Monday's reservations first crack at it. There are still a few spots open for Saturday though. Sunday remains sold out.

Wednesday we loaded 144 reef blocks and slipped on off to Jimmy's Reef. Among volunteers for the day, George was celebrating his 70th birthday. Paul & John also pitched in, as well as Capt. Kane from the Fish Bound.

That's 1,144 oyster castles, 16 rail cars, a steel boat with 7 pallets of block & 2 tog condos at Jimmy's Reef..

Soon have a load of pipe too when the swell dies down. OC Reef Foundation donation$ coming; I hope to get many barges of pipe sited at Jimmy's this year.

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Regulators still fight "Overfishing" as if it were 1990 and not 20 years into catch restriction. This week & next a lot of this season's regulatory battles will come to a close.

With bad catch-estimate data so powerful as to distract college educated biologists from the restoration power of coral habitat; three cbass overestimates threaten many businesses: May/June MA Private Boat; July/Aug NY Private Boat & Sept/Oct NJ Private Boat estimate spikes have created a regulatory garrote. I fear for many businesses & jobs, especially NJ & north.

PSE (percentage standard error or "margin of error") is a measure of "95% confidence level" - there's a 95% chance the real recreational catch is represented somewhere--anywhere--in that spread, the 'centerpoint' has no greater value than any other point in the spread.

The PSE spread for ALL party boats in ALL of the Mid-Atlantic for ALL of 2012 is between 45,000 & 135,000 cbass boxed-up and taken home.

The centerpoint estimate for ALL Mid-Atlantic Party Boats for ALL of 2012 is 90,790 sea bass.

For Massachusetts May/June private boat cbass the PSE spread is between 95,000 & 450,000 fish.

July/August NY private boat: Between zero & 225,000 cbass.

Sept/Oct NJ private boat: Between 60,000 & 420,000 cbass...

Our recreational quotas are done by weight. Where we once took millions of sea bass that didn't weigh much, now the estimates assign enormous weight to much smaller numbers of fish. We rebuilt sea bass populations with party boats catching MILLIONS of fish. Now we catch a hundred thousand and get CLOSED.

The Art & Skill of management, the ability to apply wisdom to a fishery now removed; we're in regulation's darkest hour.

If the full and complete scientific answer to: "How many fish did they catch?" includes MRIP's PSE --and every statistician tells me it certainly does, even the boss of bosses for US Fisheries Statistics-- And Because Managers Are Forever Telling Us They "Must Use The Best Available Science" -- then it stands to reason: Its Not Using The Best Available Science If They Only Use Part Of It.

Managers should act to save the human side of fisheries.

Abandon centerpoint only policy; Managers should apply PSE.

Regards,

Monty

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Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservation Line 410 520 2076
http://www.morningstarfishing.com/