[kurtfish]

If the data collectors see no fish than they report we must be overfishing it is that simple. We need to report all our landings including the baitfish we release. Owyn is a scientist, a fisherman, and a very concerned outdoorsmen. I just gave him some Yt filets for his Homeguard study.

All this abduction discussion and negative sentiments for the DFG and scientists that are just trying to do their job and accurately report what we catch is really not helpful. My original motivation to start this Clipboard Post was a call from a commercial fishermen attending meetings at Southwest Fisheries last week. The lack of Mackerel landings data was being used as an argument to shut down fishing further. A question came up during the week long discussions on the state of the Mackerel fishery as to how many hours of fishing effort would it take a rod and reel fisher to land a Mackerel off La Jolla. My buddy called me during the meeting to ask if 8 hours of fishing effort should result in at least one landing of a Mackerel off La Jolla any day of the year. My response was Hell Yes. I told my friend that not once in the past three years have a not caught Macs with just an hour or at the most two of effort.

It may seem ridiculous to us but if we do not report our numerous Mackerel landings than the logical deduction for the scientists is that might take 8 hours of effort to get one Mac. Most scientist are not fishermen like Owyn. If you take the time to look at his BWE profile you will see he has some awesome filet techniques. If you can't even take the time to talk to the cute young ladies they typically try to assign to the tough task of data gathering than you really are shooting us all in the foot.