Halibut /one any size/one 29 inch or less.

[TS]

Looking for feedback on new regulation for charter boats of one Halibut any size and one 29 inches or less. Those of you that have taken charters this year, will you charter in the future with the new regs in place?

This pertains to area 3A central gulf, Homer,Valdez,Seward,Whittier, etc.

[kodiakcombo]

it is basically one fish unless you want to wound a lot of halibut sorting thru them for a 29 incher! I will not sort thru a bunch of halibut to get 2lbs of meat? terrible reg. Another example of gov at work!

[traveler]

I'll likely still fish, but it's getting tough to justify. Wish they could figure out a better way, but I don't have the solution.

[akpolaris]

It is a pain, but you still can go home with some meat. Get the small keeper out of the way 1st. Then you don't risk having to toss a big fish back. We had to leave a spot that were catching 40# plus fish to go chase <29" fish. Seemed backwards. Maybe a better rule would be to toss back everything over 90 or 100 lbs. Leave the breeders behind. Do something similar for the commercial guys as well

[Brian M]

I think the rule is going to prove to be counterproductive. My in-laws went on a half day charter out of Homer that hits the chicken patch. Even on a boat such as this, they still had to turn lose 4-6 halibut each to find a second fish under 29". I fear that the release mortality of such an increased number of caught and released fish is going to wipe out any savings to the biomass that the regulation was designed to achieve.

[homerdave]

I am with Brian on this, I think the fish handling mortality is going to be high on the smaller fish. I know of at least one premium charter operator who doesn't even fish for the small fish. You book on his boat, you are looking for one fish and he's looking for a big one. (You can guess who that is)


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[Erik in AK]

If it were legal to keep 4 fish under 32" I'd never keep one bigger.

[Bill S.]

We took a charter this year. It was a pain because we caught a number of fish that were too big to be the small one and too small to be the big one. fortunately not that many for the 6 of us (I think 7?). He took extreme care of the ones we returned, not taking them out of the water if it was obvious it fit the above criteria. I don't know the answer, maybe keep less than 60 inches and let everything else go? Realizing letting the bigger ones go presents its own problems. I'll continue to do our once a year charter (myself and daughters so one trip is usually plenty of fish).

[270ti]

The way I saw it, the "1 under 29 inch" rule was to appease those that said that a 1 fish limit would kill the charter industry in SC. It's ridiculous, and just rip off the bandaid and go down to one fish.

[Blue Thunder]

There has been a lady doing a survey at the Anchor Point Tractor Launch. I do not know if she has been talking with the charters or not. She asks how many fish the boat caught and how many was released. When she was asked why she needed to know the release number, she was not wanting to respond. When pressured a little as to why that info was important she finally stated that they (unknown who they are) figure that 60% of the released fish will die. In my mind (twisted as it may be) they are going to add that 60% to the number of fish caught and say we are catching too many fish and they will cut the catch back to 1. I agree that we need some control, the 29" or less for the chartes is not a good thing. Maybe we need a halibut card, like the King and put a reasonable number on it so that people do not go out day after day and just keep limiting out. You can only eat so much halibut.

[homerdave]

Maybe we need a halibut card, like the King and put a reasonable number on it so that people do not go out day after day and just keep limiting out. You can only eat so much halibut.

Winner, Winner, chicken dinner!!!

[AKCAPT]

6% mortality rate not 60%……. The rule has a number of problems and I would venture to say that it will be fixed by next season.

Problems include, increasing release mortality, by forcing more handling of halibut
Anglers are keeping a larger first fish to balance out the old 12.5 average. So now the first fish in probably 20 pounds and rthe second in 10 pounds so more pounds of fish are being taken.


The good news is it makes slaughtering a huge load of halibut much more difficult. With only one nice fish per angler possible, the days of deck loading a charter boat with hog halibut is impossible.

Outside of Alaska, the charter ( for hire) bag limit is almost never lower than the private boat bag limit. The reason they avoid this else where is that they know that fishermen will just choose a private boat or rental boat for the better bag limit and conservation goals will not be met.

Punishing charter clients for the fact that there are too many charter boats does not make sense.
From where I am sitting if there is too much charter effort, then the effort should be reduced, not the bag limit
Charter anglers and private anglers both use the same license and they are both fishing for fun and food.

IF charter boat owners are the problem then restrict their efforts in some way but keep the bag limits the same for both.

Annual limits really don't result in much savings on charter boats. There are only a small number of anglers who keep more than three limits or 6 halibut. Most of them were captains and crews, who are no longer allowed to keep any.

I think if we had 5 or 6 "starts" a week in July for halibut, we would meet the conservation goals and fish salmon or something else a day or two a week in July and if that is not enough then look at the same for August.

I would way rather have two fish of any size - a quality trip that had a high demand and just run 4 or 8 less halibut trips a year, than any other option.

[Roger]

I am with Brian on this, I think the fish handling mortality is going to be high on the smaller fish. I know of at least one premium charter operator who doesn't even fish for the small fish. You book on his boat, you are looking for one fish and he's looking for a big one. (You can guess who that is)


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Yep I know who been out with him twice already this season

[Dr.No]

I agree with most of what you posted, though not this part

Charter anglers and private anglers both use the same license and they are both fishing for fun and food.

(

Seems like you're implying that they should be treated the same, but in 3A, as I'm sure you're aware, charter anglers were ~2/3rds the sport catch in 2012 (2,284,261lbs vs 1,341,494). To me, it makes sense focus on that portion of the sport catch first before restricting private anglers. In 2C, it's a different story of course....

http://www.npfmc.org/wp-content/PDFd...2_09-11-13.pdf

[AKCAPT]

I like it that you did your homework. I agree that charters should be restricted first but I think the way to restrict them is not by a lower bag limit. The restriction should come by reducing effort of the charters. It is not our client's fault that our sector is taking more halibut than the Council would like us to. Screwing our clients is killing our business and not achieving conservation goals.

IT would be like the USDA determining that there are too many cattle ranchers, so they decide the best way to restrict their activities is to allow for some rancid meat to be sold and then the demand for a good healthy product would go down, because consumers didn't like the product anymore and there would be less ranchers grazing cattle. Twisted logic.

In our case, I think we should preserve the quality of the trip and reduce the number of trips to meet the conservation goal. Then there would be a high demand for our service and when we fished halibut, the boats would be full and clients much happier
.
At least then we could offer a good trip, equal treatment for all recreational fishermen on any given day

I am sure there will be time to look at this is the fall and have a good discussing about how to proceed but this is the lesser of two evils as I see it right now. I am sure I will get a chance to hear from everyone in the charter industry when the season is over. I am too tired and busy to have this discussion here and now.

I agree with most of what you posted, though not this part

(

Seems like you're implying that they should be treated the same, but in 3A, as I'm sure you're aware, charter anglers were ~2/3rds the sport catch in 2012 (2,284,261lbs vs 1,341,494). To me, it makes sense focus on that portion of the sport catch first before restricting private anglers. In 2C, it's a different story of course....

http://www.npfmc.org/wp-content/PDFd...2_09-11-13.pdf