1/26 - Just sick of it all......

I'm on the Coastal Conservation Associations (CCA) mailing list. And it seems like each week I get another shocking e-mail.

Shocking because I read the e-mails and all it sounds like is LIFE as we know it, is nothing but one ridicules fight after another. When it comes to the "sport" of fishing. Yeah I said SPORT, for fun, non-commercial. You know, taking the family out, spending hard earned bucks on Fuel, Bait, Tackle, Boats, Trailers, Trucks, Maintenance, do I need to go on?

All the while supporting business'  like; your local boat dealer, mechanic, Habib, that owns the zippy mart that sells BP fuel. The bait shop, the company that delivers the ice, the bait company, the tackle distributor, do I need to go on?

All this really pisses me off after watching that speach from the President last night on the tube. Which was just a pep rally, it seemed to me. While we get slammed constantly, because what ever management of the fisheries that's out there just isn't good enough. SO LETS SHUT THE DOORS! Is  what they always want to do. On old science. I'll spare you the dirty details of each email I recieve from the CCA.

You may not have heard about the battles over Red Snapper and Grouper off our coast. It's a soap opera of back and forth with the supposed "rule makers and their science."

But, we're talking peoples livelihoods, here.

Just like the oil spill took work and food straight out of the mouths of many. This fight is the same. But the Fisherman themselves are the BP? And the blame is on the fisherman, for fishing under the limits and rules.

I play by the rules. But as the joke goes, "Us fisherman have to carry a damn lawyer with us each time we drop our boats in the water, these days."

Yeah, these recreational "weekender" fisherman are supposedly depleting the resource, while fishing with the present rules. But the rule makers are never happy. It's a "shut them down" attitude. But at the same time our goverment wants us to spend the dough every weekend. Ya know...to keep Americans working!

Here's a few of the headlines from each CCA email notice I have recieved,  just this week alone!

Federal fisheries managers are set to close another popular recreational fishery in the South Atlantic in the latest example of how chronic lapses in science and data-collection are wreaking havoc on the recreational angling sector. Less than two months after narrowly avoiding a massive closure of all bottom fishing in the South Atlantic to recover red snapper, federal managers have announced that black sea bass are set to become off-limits from February to June due to circumstances that sounds frustratingly familiar to anglers.

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Public hearings and scoping meetings will be held on four separate amendments regarding fisheries management measures proposed for several federally managed species within the South Atlantic region.


Dolphin, Cobia, and Wahoo anglers should be very concerned.

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