Article from my brother on the 2015 lingcod bag limit increase

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/fishermen-divided-over-new-limit-rules/Content?oid=4019767

Good article.  I'm with the "when stocks increase--allow additional take, give more back to fishermen" camp.  Otherwise fishery managers are always in the "take away" position, and fishermen don't trust them.

I consider the increase in ling cod a great management success.  We should benefit from this, and have more faith that they're getting it right.

My biggest gripe is that increased ling cod abundance will be attributed to MPAs, which is not even slightly the case.

I think a lot about the halibut, and how slammed they got in 2009 when the salmon season was closed. If the limit was 2 maybe it would have been less detrimental. It seems wrong to me to raise the size limit because there are more fish in order to increase angler opportunity. Reopening some of the MPAs would do more for angler opportunity than raising bag limits.

Thanks for the link. I usually only keep one ling cod as it is now. If they do increase the bag I hope they add a slot limit. Maybe everything over 36" is released, let's keep that big fish genetics around and not copy the east coasts big mistake with their cod stocks. Actually I wouldn't mind a slot on all species salt or not.

If they do increase the bag I hope they add a slot limit.

They wont. My understanding is that it's already on the books. Typical b***shit from DFW.

There are too many lings and there are still plenty of big ones up north.  It's your ass hole reps down south from Santa Cruz to Socal that fuel us out of the April- Dec 31st season with a depth increase in October, but yet Yale managed to get an increase in depth and still have a longer season with way more presume by far more people.  The big party boats especially further south of Santa Cruz constantly fish the deeper waters and kill lots of Roses and other rockfish because they don't use descenders.  We don't even have any big charters the size of the ones yall have down south.

There are too many lings and there are still plenty of big ones up north. 

Define too many lings.

There are too many lings and there are still plenty of big ones up north. 

Define too many lings.

Anytime I rockfish I catch more than twice the amount of lings than any other rockfish.  There will be many to back me up on that too.  The overpopulated lings are killing the rockfish. The lings I caught the other day were puking up baby rockfish.

There are too many lings and there are still plenty of big ones up north.  It's your ass hole reps down south from Santa Cruz to Socal that fuel us out of the April- Dec 31st season with a depth increase in October, but yet Yale managed to get an increase in depth and still have a longer season with way more presume by far more people.  The big party boats especially further south of Santa Cruz constantly fish the deeper waters and kill lots of Roses and other rockfish because they don't use descenders.  We don't even have any big charters the size of the ones yall have down south.

Rob that doesn't make sense.
The rockfish season is mostly determined by endangered species...in this case yelloweye rockfish. This year CA is allotted 3.4 tons of YE rockfish bycatch. If they somehow determine that we've exceeded that # they declare an emergency closure and shut down the season early. (Of course, the way they estimate YE bycatch is leaves a lot of room for error; fish counters asking fishermen how many YEs they caught multiplied by how many estimated anglers fished each day multiplied by an estimated 60% mortality rate = ?) Through this voodoo math they say more YE are caught in the Northern and Mendo management areas. So those areas have shorter seasons and shallower depth restrictions...to limit bycatch of YE rockfish. I remember when they closed the season early and everybody was blaming Shelter Cove because the DFG's voodoo math determined that region harvested more YE than the rest of the entire state and we exceeded the annual limit, which was like 2.5 tons. It was BS but that's why the seasons are shorter up there, to minize YE bycatch so they don't have to shut it down early.
Here's the 2014 YE harvest tracker: https://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/groundfishcentral/tracking.asp

Rob, you're right about 2 things: Lingcod are becoming more abundant, and lingcod eat rockfish. But it's your opinion (as well as DFW's apparently) that there are too many. I'm seeing more and more rockfish (as well as lings) in areas that were relatively barren a few years ago. Not sure if that's from the MPAs or what, but trying to curb the ling population seems risky to me. I wouldn't be surprised if DFW alters the regs in a few years to compensate for the increase in take that will occur.

Salmon eat rockfish, too. Cabezon eat abalone. Sea lions eat salmon. Everything eats something. Trying to micro-manage nature's ways won't work in my opinion. I'd rather we just enjoy the abundance. Who needs 3 lings anyway?

Rob, you're right about 2 things: Lingcod are becoming more abundant, and lingcod eat rockfish. But it's your opinion (as well as DFW's apparently) that there are too many. I'm seeing more and more rockfish (as well as lings) in areas that were relatively barren a few years ago. Not sure if that's from the MPAs or what, but trying to curb the ling population seems risky to me. I wouldn't be surprised if DFW alters the regs in a few years to compensate for the increase in take that will occur.

Salmon eat rockfish, too. Cabezon eat abalone. Sea lions eat salmon. Everything eats something. Trying to micro-manage nature's ways won't work in my opinion. I'd rather we just enjoy the abundance. Who needs 3 lings anyway?

All good points.

Allen (Polepole) posted up an article a little while ago reporting that the Pacific Fishery Management Council stated that they now consider most all of the groundfish fisheries on the West coast sustainable.  That's a far cry from where we were ten years ago.  In a world where all you read about is collapsing fisheries this is great news.

I'd just like to see anglers benefit sometimes from successful fisheries management--although I guess the counter-arguement to that could be that having a plentiful fishery is a good benefit.

I personally would rather they opened the season year round for lings.  Or they could make it barbless the six months it is now closed.

Rob, you're right about 2 things: Lingcod are becoming more abundant, and lingcod eat rockfish. But it's your opinion (as well as DFW's apparently) that there are too many. I'm seeing more and more rockfish (as well as lings) in areas that were relatively barren a few years ago. Not sure if that's from the MPAs or what, but trying to curb the ling population seems risky to me. I wouldn't be surprised if DFW alters the regs in a few years to compensate for the increase in take that will occur.
/quote]

It's not opinion.  It's fact.  A few years back the lingcod populations were already at 70%  virgin biomass and growing rapidly.  Compare this to the 40% level that fish stocks are managed to.  It's way out of wack.  However, I can understand why fisheries managers may be hesitant to increase opportunities here.  Increased opportunities result in increased pressure on unintended stocks (yelloweye).  But there should be ways to address this.

-Allen

How do we know what 100% biomass was/is? How far back does existing data go? Does "too many lings" mean there are more than 100% of virgin biomass? That seems nearly impossible.