Ahoy,
There are some very important red snapper issues being discussed by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery management Council.

First, Council is working on determining the 2013 quota for red snapper and is also considering reducing the recreational bag limit to 1 fish as a way to increase the number of fishing days. Please watch this video presentation and send us your comments on the issue before the end of January. http://youtu.be/dAlwPT9K-vo

Next week the Council is hosting a series of scoping workshops that deal with the idea of regional management or recreational red snapper. We will be traveling to a number of different cities across the Gulf asking for pubic input.
All meetings will begin at 6pm and finish no later than 9pm.


January 14, 2013

Doubletree by Hilton

4964 Constitution Avenue

Baton Rouge, LA 70808


Holiday Inn Express

2440 Gulf Freeway

Texas City, TX 77591

January 15, 2013
Hilton Garden Inn

6717 S. Padre Island Drive

Corpus Christi, TX 78412


Four Points by Sheraton

940 Beach Boulevard
Biloxi, MS 39530

January 16, 2013 

Hilton Garden Inn

23092 Perdido Beach Blvd.

Orange Beach, AL 36561

January 17, 2013 

Destin Community Center

101 Stahlman Avenue

Destin, FL 32541

January 22, 2013

Hilton St. Petersburg Carillon Park

950 Lake Carillon Drive

St. Petersburg, FL 33716

If you won�t be able to join us at the workshops you can still submit your comments. Follow this link to our �Scoping Documents & Proposed Amendments� page and scrolling down to the section titled �Reef Fish Amendment 39 � Regional Management of Recreational Red Snapper.

http://www.gulfcouncil.org/fishery_management_plans/scoping-thru-implementation.php

(A short video explaining the possibility of red snapper regional management will be posted on the above link before the end of this week.)

Also, please don�t hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions about this stuff: Emily.Muehlstein@GulfCouncil.org

If you want to get more direct info on what the Council is doing �like� at www.facebook.com/GulfCouncil

Your Chum,
Emily

Really a bag limit of one fish! Man that sucks, my wife just started to like Red Snapper!

WOW, 1 fish. I think this idea may backfire on you. It's a hard enough sell to drive out for three hours catch two fish and then drive three hours back. I'm not doing it for 1 fish. Boats will spend more time targeting other species like vermillion snapper and then they will be "endangered" also. How about keeping the season open year round for weekends only and bumping it up to 3 or 4 fish?

Thank you for being the messenger and taking all the abuse for the council.

who would pay for a trip to go target 1 snapper, let alone share a snapper with your buddy? thats bs. last year we came in on our boat with our two snapper a piece and a comercial boat comes in with hundreds if not thousands of small red snapper on ice. i guess i dont see how recreational fishing is the issue. also why is it based on lbs. instead of numbers. the fish we catch today are maybe twice as heavy as 6-7 years ago

A one snapper limit or half a red snapper limit is the final nail in the coffin for the recreational/charter boat deep sea industry. I go fishing for red snapper out of Galveston, TX, and it takes a 12 hour day to: 1)reach water deep enough that hold big snapper, 2)have enough time for fishing, and 3)get back to the pier. I pay $90 each time I go out but it's well worth the trip when I sit down at the dinner table to enjoy my catch. Sometimes my wife complains about me being gone all day, but she so enjoys that red snapper that she tolerates it. However, I wouldn't be able to justify making this trip to myself, let alone my wife for one or half a red snapper. This trip will just not be worth my time; my red snapper fishing days will be over.

I'm not sure whose idea it is to reduce the daily red snapper limit to one fish daily, but they are not considering the economic impact of such a change. Not many people will pay good money for one fish per day. This will not only have a devastating impact on for hire boats/businesses, but it will also have an economic impact because of lost tourism dollars.

More blackfin tuna trips, and a snapper stop at some point to catch one. Beeliners taste better to me than snapper anyways.

Why is it that a commercial fisherman can take HUGE amounts of a public resource and I can only have one or two fish? Aren't they just as much mine as the are his? Hold the dang commercial fishermen to the same standard as everyone else. THEY HAVE NO MORE RIGHT TO A PUBLIC RESORSE THAN ANY OTHER AMERICAN CITIZEN! I understand that they make a living for themselves but so did the buffalo hunters.

One fish? Why bother.

NMFS position is that recs are taking an equal amount of fish. I have followed the issue for a while and the numbers to prove this position are impossible in my opinion.

It does seem that is the point. Catch Shares are being pushed very hard. This is what catch shares do. It is the gifting of a public resource (in this case American Red Snapper) to private companies or individuals who can then lease or sell the resource they paid nothing for. Its about the money.

This is from another forum and I left the authors signature at the bottom.

We fished from 1995-2006 under a 9.12 million pound TAC for the Gulf Red Snapper, 4 fish per person, and enjoyed 244 day seasons (avg).

Take a look at the NMFS' own numbers attempting to justify the ever-shortening seasons;

1995-2006: Rec TAC = 4,468,800 pounds / 244 days = 18,314 pounds per day or 5,723 3.2 pound fish per day with 4 fish daily bag limits.

2012: Rec TAC = 3,959,200 pounds / 40 days = 98,980 pounds per day or 15,227 6.5 pound fish per day with 2 fish daily bag limits.

Seeing as how the CFH fleet has been reduced by 20% in recent years, fuel prices have surged in recent years, bag limits have been slashed by 50% in recent years, multiple reliable sources show a marked DECREASE in offshore effort in recent years, and considering it's illegal for private recreational fishermen to keep multiple daily bag limits per day, please explain EXACTLY how this is possible.

Think about it - how are we supposed to catch almost 3X the number of fish per day with 50% less fish per day to do it? Did I mention we also have 20% LESS charter boats? That equates to about 6 trips per day this year as compared to 1 trip per day during the 1995-2006 baseline period.

(Answer) It's not possible. It's simply cooking of the books by Crabtree and Co. to try to coerce us into accepting Catch Shares/IFQs in the recreational sector.

There needs to be a SERIOUS investigation into this outright fraud designed to convert our Public Trust Resource into privately-owned commodities using contorted, deceitful models and equations that have absolutely no basis in reality.

I believe that we currently have LESS effort offshore than ever before. Couple that with the 8.08 million pound TAC, we SHOULD be fishing at least 194 days per year (probably more), IF realistic effort, landings, and biomass assessments data were used.

Think about it - if we had 200+ day red snapper seasons, would there be any perceived need for catch shares/IFQs in the recreational sector?

Nope. That's why they have artificially truncated our fishing seasons using intentionally-flawed "best available science" to do it.

Criminal, to say the least.

Capt. Thomas J. Hilton

From my own experience, I cannot find snapper in any supermarket and don't ever see it on any menus at the restaurants. At least that is the case around here. I'm also tired of paying for extra fuel on my offshore trips to get away from the snapper. I've noticed the massive schools of snapper on most wrecks reefs etc. chase certain fish away.... amberjack and other mid to lower depth fish. Also the past two years I've caught snapper while slow trolling ribbonfish for kings. Also the studies done on snapper are with random cooridinates from a computer. Not on structure where the fish live

you dont see other states with this limit texas law is really stupid on all are fishing laws, dont forget shrimping,i think texas should buy back all our fishing rods, boats, and fishing lic . like they did the shrimp boat lic, and then stick all of it where the sun dont shine, i fish in lucyanna great laws, great limits great people, not like here bait houses ready to hang it to you,