combatting Big Fish Texas - frick those guys

I really hope this catches steam. Never before have there been cameras on board showing exactly how they destroy entire breeding populations of these fish in a matter of days and how complacent they have become with dealing out the shares and fish. Would be awesome if this fat a-hole had his whole empire come down just because he got greedy and wanted the nat geo paycheck on top of the millions he was sucking off the government teet.

This show is the best thing that could happen to recreational fishing. What I mean is that is great video evidence of what we have been screaming for years.

I just hope anyone that cares gets to see it.

This is totally acceptable management of the red snapper, but rec guys keeping 2 a day for a week is killing the fishery.

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It's a goddamn abomination that they can get away with this.

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Do the Party boats fall under the same criteria? I know last year they were under a different set of rules and they got to pretty much fish all year. I wonder if they fall under the same quota system as the commercial guys do as those guys can fish all year too. I

If you want to see an abomination, let one of those boats show up on a spot that you are on.

They have IFQ's but they come out of the recreation %. I just bumped the original thread that has been linked on other sites around the web.

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Do the Party boats fall under the same criteria? I know last year they were under a different set of rules and they got to pretty much fish all year. I wonder if they fall under the same quota system as the commercial guys do as those guys can fish all year too. I

If you want to see an abomination, let one of those boats show up on a spot that you are on.

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Federally licensed charter boats now get 50% of recreational's quota. This is a recent development called "sector separation." Commercial's quota remained untouched. Previously charter captains and rec fishermen all fell under the rec sector and when commercial brought their annual lawsuit alleging rec exceeded quota, everyone had to stop fishing. Now charter captains and head boats get their own slice and their season can run a few months. They turned the rec sector against themselves, bought the charter captains, and got them to endorse the federal management plan basically with one big kickback. Now if recreational fishermen want anything to change they'll be fighting both commercial and the charter captains, who collectively control 75%+ of the quota.