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3K views 26 replies 14 participants last post by  Smalma 
#1 ·
Can someone point me in the right direction to catch some fish in the salt? Im not looking for SRC'c or anything like that. I just wanted to take my wife and try and catch anything we can get. Somthign different would be cool. We like to catch differnt types of fish.
 
#27 ·
Cabezon -
There is no question that over fishing has seriously impacted species like yelloweye rockfish. These are long lived species with maximum ages of more than 100 years and it may take 20 or more years for 1/2 of the population to reach sexual maturity. However that doesn't necessarily mean that species like the blacks are as vulnerable. While they do not live as long; max. age of about 50 years, they do mature at a much younger age with 1/2 of the poulation reaching sexually mature at 6 or 7 years of age.

The Puget Sound/inner strait fish were also clearly over fished though you have to admit that those populations were much more confined and accessible to anglers than the ocean populations. As a result they apparently experienced a much higher (excessive exploitation rates).

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not defending the current generous bag limits; off the top of my head I would thing something like a 2 or 3 fish limit would be more than adequate though I suspect that would be a minority opinion in the angling community. Of course my thinking is undoubtly influenced by general conservative nature and the lack of a desire to eat more than an occassional rockfish.

One of the reason that I would encourage concern anglers to think about submitting regulation change ideas is that often in the process of developing ones ideas you end up learning a fair amount about the species of interest which may either address or increase your concerns. Also hopefully the agency response to your ideas should supply additional information and the biological support for the current regulations. It never hurts the resource to have informed anglers caring about it.

Tight lines
Curt
 
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