03/05/2022 | Some Sea Bass and a Slow Pick of Tautog

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6vBBlmXLcg

We had a nice early March day today with decent temps that got into the 50s and it felt even nicer with little to no wind throughout the day. I was even able to get out on the golf course with some good friends and get some fresh air. The weather warms up even more starting tomorrow with temps reaching into the upper 60s, but that increase comes with wind from the south so fishing will be tough. Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star was able to get out on the rip for some bottom fishing today and though it wasn’t a home run, he did put some nice fish in the boat.

Nice bit of art in today’s rising sun. Birthday guys JoJo & James built some reef. Ran off the beach this day; looking for some big tog.

Nicked a few sea bass. Knot-heads growing vivid blue, tails longer & broader to impress the ladies – it’ll soon be a mad dash inshore for male sea bass to stake their claim on spawning habitat.

For tog?

Grand hopes dashed. We had the slowest of slow picks. My swinging for the fence nearly left us struck out.

Joe’s 25.5 inch released tog took the money. He had no real competition among other keepers. All but one of today’s tog were tagged.

Oyyyyy…

Wrote a great huge piece recently, “On the Theft of Marine Recreational Fisheries.” Here’s an excerpt that shows how a NJ Shore tautog estimate from this time of year in 2010 grew from ‘bad’ when first published, to nearly a million pounds of recreational catch that never happened.

In the essay I describe how these ruinously incorrect recreational catch estimates are being folded into fisheries science to give grossly over-large quotas.

Ours dissipate on computer screens while commercial quota turns into real fish at market.

When recreational harvest limits (‘RHLs’ – or recreational quotas) are exceeded on computer screens – and Private Boats from one state or another are made to look as though they were a more deadly force than foreign factory trawlers of yore – it’s a harmless illusion from a single, or collection of, overestimates. The cumulative effect of always higher estimates creates data that tricks fisheries scientists into thinking there are more fish in the sea than there actually are.

OK, OK.. It doesn’t actually fool the scientists. Big boss says “they’re peer reviewed and the only ‘scientific information’ we have so use em.”

And they do.

For regulation too

..knowing dern well the catch didn’t happen.

After MRIPs last ‘recalibration’ in 2018, both recreational & commercial quotas rose sharply in 2019. Recreational fishers saw no loosening of regulation because, so far as MRIP data is concerned, ‘we’re already catching MORE than our increase’ and out regs should tighten.

In sea bass, for instance, I believe 7.4m lbs of the 10.4m lbs we’re accused of landing are pure illusion – 7.4 millions lbs of fish that never saw a hook..

But when commercial quotas go up; it’s real fish, not visages on a computer that die.

I was fishing in the decades before regulation began. Recreational “overfishing” with today’s regulations in place is a farce – a computer generated mirage.

While some of us have fought bad catch data at every turn, NOAA’s statisticians have some mighty fancy battlements in place. With every attack they have simply made their estimates worse.

They swear this is because recreational fishers from shore and private boats are not telling the truth when called. When tasked with correcting their work statisticians simply ‘find more anglers who lied’ and increase fishing effort.

By a lot.

So catch goes up.

By a lot.

“No,” you say?

Well, here’s an example of just how screwed up NOAA’s “improvements “ & “recalibrations” – all of MRIP really – have become..

*****

Here from “On the Theft of Marine Recreational Fisheries” 2/28/22 Capt. Monty Hawkins…

In 2007 Congress mandated NOAA replace their old estimating system, MRFSS, and wanted it done by 2009.

Despite attending numerous meetings about the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) as it was being developed, it seemed fishermen were unable to offer anything of value. They just wanted to tell us how it was going to be. It seemed to me their work proceeded with certain knowledge that ONLY statisticians could ever cipher recreational catch. Fishermen had no clue & our comments were ignored. At MRIP’s release in 2012 I was sure we’d been ignored.

There were no stops. With no idea of fish or fishing, a catch can drain the sea 20 feet and still make perfect sense to a statistician.

This was MRIP – unleashed on a fishing public that had been expecting repair.

What a mess.

Deep in it at the time, I’d pointed out the utter ridiculousness of New Jersey’s 2010 March/April Shore Tautog Estimate when it was published. I’d complained in my writings and at several meetings – was using that specific NJ Shore estimate to illustrate NOAA’s insanity. What in real life would be under a couple hundred tautog caught in the very end of the two month March/April wave was ‘estimated’ at 73,000 tautog caught and killed by Shore fishermen under NOAA’s old system, MRFSS.

The very day the new system, MRIP, came out, it was the first estimate I checked

.and knew we were sunk. MRIP changed that estimate (repaired it?) by adding 100,000 more tautog. Now it was 174,000 tautog where experts such as long time outdoor columnist, Al Ristori, suspected less than 200 shore-caught NJ tog in the tail end of April — if any.

Some repair.

The increase seen in this estimate fairly well expresses the disdain shown fishers by NOAA’s statisticians. They actually bragged about it in print – said it showed what a great job they were doing. ‘Well, it’s just a single state/single wave estimate. They’re supposed to be taken in annual form and with lots of states to smooth the bumps. That’s how they’re supposed to be used. We think they’re pretty good.”

In actual fisheries management, single two-month ‘wave’ estimates from a single state are used All The Time to make regulations. Single state, single two month ‘wave’ estimate spikes absolutely do matter. When managers decide where to trim season to reduce catch, single state/single wave estimates are their ONLY guide..

Following more ‘peer reviews’ (involving not one fisherman) in 2018 MRIP was ‘recalibrated’.

That hopelessly incorrect NJ tautog estimate that had grown by 100,000 computer caught fish, (along with innumerable other MRIP estimates) was repaired to near-perfection as far as statisticians were concerned. Under MRIP’s ‘recalibration’ that small band of die-hard NJ tautog anglers trying to land the first blackfish of the year from shore were now estimated to have caught 341,440 fish – over 800,000lbs.

Almost a million pounds estimated for a shore catch that might not have actually filled a bucket.

Oh, it’s fixed alright..