To Fish or not To Fish?

That is the question. Lately it seems I’m getting a lot of emails on how the Government wants to curtail our fishing. Let me explain; The NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Services) who has already put the clamps on red snapper, grouper, black sea bass and other species is now looking to put drastic changes on the bag limits for cobia in our state waters. Right now the bag limit stands at 1 per person or 6 per boat per day. The new legislation would cut the number to 1 cobia per boat per day. You wonder why they, the government, would want to do this when fishermen say the cobia stocks are the strongest they’ve seen in 25 years. You can read more about this in this months issue of the Florida Sportsman or www.floridasportsman.com.
You may ask yourself who is really pushing the Government to make all these changes to our fishing regulations? In this writers “opinion” it’s the environmental group known as PEW Charitable Trusts. For the sake of losing my cool here and going off on my soap box I urge you to go to their website www.pewcharitabletrusts.org and find Protecting Ocean Life and see what there up to. Again, “in my opinion,” they would like to see fishing shut down altogether.
Here’s another good email I received; Florida State Senator Joe Negron (R-Stuart) introduced a bill, S.B.744, which would eliminate resident and non-resident fishing licenses. If this bill passes, Florida’s fisheries management system and the recreational fishing economy would be devastated. You can learn more about this ridiculous bill, and I strongly urge you to do so because this will affect not only fisherman but business’s and jobs, by going to:
www.keepamericafishing.org
I read all this stuff and I ask myself why? Why would people or organizations want to affect the lives of millions of people? Before I get into politics, which I really don’t want to do in a fishing column, let me just say this; “can’t we all just get along”.
Enough depressing news, let’s talk about fishing. The inshore fishing this past week has been on the slow side overall. High tides and the full moon both had an affect on the bite. Look for this to change with the advent of the new moon and warming water temperatures. It’s been beautiful lately so do yourself a favor and get out and enjoy these days before the real heat sets in. Looking at the national weather I feel very lucky to be living in Florida.