[color=#006600]Marthin[/color] wrote:
carch ur missing my point, even if its not a valid one. The commercials do not target the musselcracker. They as miles said for great stretches of our coast cannot even if they want target galjoen. The demise of these fish are solely the fault of the recreational angler, and also non existant policing by MCM. The same with elf/shad
Steenbras and kob, now we getting into the commercial sector having an impact, but i definately feel recreationals at least 50% blame
Hake and all the other truely commercialised species definately 75% commercial at fault, 20% poor management by MCM and at least 5% uneducated public
I just used snoek as an example, as this is one specie where everyone grabs as much as they can, and recreationals in my view grab more than they need or the people they know need, just for the sake of catching.
There are lots of fish that the commercial sector do not target, but they don't throw it back either, it's sold as a bycatch.
That includes Musselcracker, shad, galjoen and every other fish that swims into the net, bites on the line, which ever way they are fishing at the time.
The person that thinks the commercial sector do not target Crackers and Shad really need to catch a wake up !!!! Go to St Francis bay, wait for the COMMERCIAL boats to come in and see what they offload, I'm not talking about 20 and 30m boats, I'm talking about the 6m boats with 4 commercials onboard. You then tell me this sh!t again.
Sure recreational fisherman (incl sports) take from the sea, but not nearly as much as is said, 50% blame for cob, please man, how do you get to that. On a good day a normal recreational (inshore) angler catches 10 cob with a total weight of say 100kg, he does this 2 to 3 times a month, on a BAD day a commercial line fishing boat loads 1000kg of cob, on a good day 2-3000kg. Most recreational fisherman throw back what they don't want, like undersize cob, commercials don't easily do that, its money and bycatch.
A commercial line fishing boat takes more in a day from the sea than 10 average recreational fisherman take in a year. Now keep in mind that a commercial boat goes to sea as often as it possibly can, and the recreational fisherman goes whenever he can, say about 3 times a month for the recreational fisherman, say about 10 to 15 times a month for the commercial. If you work out the average for the smaller commercial boats over a year it comes to about 10 times a month.
This will look like I'm slamming the commercial sector, I'm not. I understand that there must be a commercial sector, it's job creation, it puts food on the table for lots of families and provides fish to people that can't / won't go fishing to eat fish.
I'm just tired of the blame being shifted in the direction of recreational fisherman. We as recreational do have to accept a degree of responsibility but definately not to the extend that some people, companies and government are saying.