The View from Afar

toomer

Every summer after the war until the early 60's my parents, who were school teachers, would caretake a cottage on a couple of acres on Ft Myers beach for a month or two. (You turned right just after the old wooden bridge to get to it.) Next door to us lived the Greens, commercial fishermen, shrimpers and all-round great, hard working folks. Old Mr Green was always kind to this tow-headed kid who bugged him as he seined baitfish in a cut between our two houses. I grew up envying this family and their way of life.

Of course, Ft Myers Beach, Sanibel, Captiva and all were sleepy little places back then. I would hope that many of you on this Forum knew it back then too. Idyllic, actually. But the growth and greed that started in the mid 60's and exploded in the 70's changed all that, needless to say. It makes me sad and angry to know what was and see what is. I just hope folks like the Greens and others like them were able to sell and get their piece.

I read this Conservation Forum regularly. I am an avid recreational angler. It is in my interest to side with the recs on most things. But I remember the Greens and how they lived and what they stood for as commercial fishermen. I watch you all fuss and fight on this forum and feel like I can relate to both sides.

However, there are more than just two sides at play here: state and federal agencies, interest groups, trusts, lawyers of all stripes. It just makes me sick how complicated this has all gotten.

I am a nobody in this passion play. I am an outsider and hope you don't mind me starting this thread. I'm not agitating or advocating. I just thought that every once in a while we need to pause and remember what we once had before greed almost took it away. And greed is our common enemy here, not each other.

Tom Hilton

Agreed.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

ANUMBER1

toomer wrote: »

Every summer after the war until the early 60's my parents, who were school teachers, would caretake a cottage on a couple of acres on Ft Myers beach for a month or two. (You turned right just after the old wooden bridge to get to it.) Next door to us lived the Greens, commercial fishermen, shrimpers and all-round great, hard working folks. Old Mr Green was always kind to this tow-headed kid who bugged him as he seined baitfish in a cut between our two houses. I grew up envying this family and their way of life.

Of course, Ft Myers Beach, Sanibel, Captiva and all were sleepy little places back then. I would hope that many of you on this Forum knew it back then too. Idyllic, actually. But the growth and greed that started in the mid 60's and exploded in the 70's changed all that, needless to say. It makes me sad and angry to know what was and see what is. I just hope folks like the Greens and others like them were able to sell and get their piece.

I read this Conservation Forum regularly. I am an avid recreational angler. It is in my interest to side with the recs on most things. But I remember the Greens and how they lived and what they stood for as commercial fishermen. I watch you all fuss and fight on this forum and feel like I can relate to both sides.

However, there are more than just two sides at play here: state and federal agencies, interest groups, trusts, lawyers of all stripes. It just makes me sick how complicated this has all gotten.

I am a nobody in this passion play. I am an outsider and hope you don't mind me starting this thread. I'm not agitating or advocating. I just thought that every once in a while we need to pause and remember what we once had before greed almost took it away. And greed is our common enemy here, not each other.

Yes sir, I didn't grow up in a commercial fishing family but my father (and I) held them in good esteem as they made a living by the sweat of their brow.
You're right, it's not that simple anymore but this commercial fisherman thanks you for your post.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Art

BubbaII

toomer wrote: »

I am a nobody in this passion play. I am an outsider and hope you don't mind me starting this thread. I'm not agitating or advocating. I just thought that every once in a while we need to pause and remember what we once had before greed almost took it away. And greed is our common enemy here, not each other.

I can remember driving to Carabelle one time in the late 70s from where I lived in the northern Gulf. I hadn't been on the coast for long, and had not driven across the panhandle before. Even tho it was at night, I figured I could get gas in Destin. LOL. Destin (on 98) was a gas station/general store and a couple of little roadside mom-and-pop motels, and I remember there being a few signs for some charter boats. I did get gas there, but man, if I'd blinked, I'd have missed Destin entirely as I drove thru.

The world has definitely changed.

surfman

Agree completely. A simpler time is longed for. Too many people.

lemaymiami

As a fellow who once held a commercial hook and line ticket for a few years I can sympathize with folks that fished commercially long before the rise of power roller rigs and serious commercial rigs that come with mortgages to pay and the need to maximize their catch each day without a look to the future. Back then the commercial fisheries were absolutely sustainable (when a net operator set and hauled by hand.. or a hook and liner only caught what he or she could sell to their local fish house or restaurant).

That just hasn't been the case in years and years - and never will be again unless you're in some third world place -and a long way from civilization. We either properly conserve and protect our fisheries or we'll lose them, period. You can guess which "side" I'm on.

ANUMBER1

lemaymiami wrote: »

As a fellow who once held a commercial hook and line ticket for a few years I can sympathize with folks that fished commercially long before the rise of power roller rigs and serious commercial rigs that come with mortgages to pay and the need to maximize their catch each day without a look to the future. Back then the commercial fisheries were absolutely sustainable (when a net operator set and hauled by hand.. or a hook and liner only caught what he or she could sell to their local fish house or restaurant).

That just hasn't been the case in years and years - and never will be again unless you're in some third world place -and a long way from civilization. We either properly conserve and protect our fisheries or we'll lose them, period. You can guess which "side" I'm on.

Most of the commercial mullet fishery on the west coast were owner/operator(maybe one helper) that hauled by hand. That's the ones that took it in the shorts.
I know I was and you can guess which side I'm on.

toomer

ANUMBER1 wrote: »

Most of the commercial mullet fishery on the west coast were owner/operator(maybe one helper) that hauled by hand. That's the ones that took it in the shorts.
I know I was and you can guess which side I'm on.

I am curious how many of those smaller operators had built up enough equity (in waterfront property and other holdings) to soften the blow? Or how many were lease jobbers and had to scramble for something else? Or were able to guide?

lemaymiami

There was a huge compensation given at the time of the amendment going into effect (mostly if I remember correctly in the form of a net purchase program. Some of the netters went into other commercial marine stuff -some even became fishing guides and were very skilled since they knew exactly where the fish were at an time of year. I'm sure the guy on post #7 can recite chapter and verse for you.

By the way this whole deal was more than twenty years ago but periodically someone raises it as though it were just yesterday....

ANUMBER1

lemaymiami wrote: »

There was a huge compensation given at the time of the amendment going into effect (mostly if I remember correctly in the form of a net purchase program. Some of the netters went into other commercial marine stuff -some even became fishing guides and were very skilled since they knew exactly where the fish were at an time of year. I'm sure the guy on post #7 can recite chapter and verse for you.

By the way this whole deal was more than twenty years ago but periodically someone raises it as though it were just yesterday....

Huge? 20 million for the whole state, sounds like a bunch until it's divided by 5000.
I ran both the Crystal River and Cross City net buy back sites, the bigger players (with more invested) received more but the average amount for most was less than 10k.
Tell the truth lemay, would you give up the tools of your trade(and your trade) for 1/4 to 1/3 of what they were worth?

diggin4grouper

some seem to believe that there is a lot of money to be made and from all the mis information out there i can understand that , but there is not last mullet trip we made we had 7 boxes 4 1/2 roe and 2 1/2 bucks 3 people on the boat 2 throwing and one keeping us on the mullet if we find them right now its a 1.00 a pound for the roe and .10 a pound for bucks you do the math and dived that 4 ways

for the 7 boxes this is how it breaks down
450 lbs x 1.00 = 450.00
250 lbs x 0.10 = 25.00
475.00
/4
118.75 that was a full day out on the water almost 14 hours because we have to go and find the mullet in the ocean

duckmanJR

How much of that row...you know...fish eggs for the next spawn....are eaten here in America?...

And don't say something patently stupid like that witnessed 300 individual trips with 1 redfish.... like in the other post....just the truth will do.

duckmanJR

diggin4grouper wrote: »

some seem to believe that there is a lot of money to be made and from all the mis information out there i can understand that , but there is not last mullet trip we made we had 7 boxes 4 1/2 roe and 2 1/2 bucks 3 people on the boat 2 throwing and one keeping us on the mullet if we find them right now its a 1.00 a pound for the roe and .10 a pound for bucks you do the math and dived that 4 ways

for the 7 boxes this is how it breaks down
450 lbs x 1.00 = 450.00
250 lbs x 0.10 = 25.00
475.00
/4
118.75 that was a full day out on the water almost 14 hours because we have to go and find the mullet in the ocean

Back to math class...475 divided by 3 =......c'mon...you can do it.

diggin4grouper

duckmanJR wrote: »

How much of that row...you know...fish eggs for the next spawn....are eaten here in America?...

And don't say something patently stupid like that witnessed 300 individual trips with 1 redfish.... like in the other post....just the truth will do.

as far as i know about 30 to 40% of it is eaten here in america and the rest is sent over seas , if more people would get the idea out of there head the mullet is just bait might be higher

and for the record i dont need to lie about any thing there is a file on the poacher hot line of the guy with the 300 reds and he was caught , i have even had other poachers pose for pictures

this one he was spear fishing in a canal

diggin4grouper

duckmanJR wrote: »

Back to math class...475 divided by 3 =......c'mon...you can do it.

i was correct in my math so com on man boat share , 2 crew members and the captian = 4 shares the boat always gets it share

any more stupid questions from you will be ignored

duckmanJR

diggin4grouper wrote: »

i was correct in my math so com on man boat share , 2 crew members and the captian = 4 shares the boat always gets it share

any more stupid questions from you will be ignored

Boat share on a little river netter... :rotflmao....You are either stupid ( we all have our opinions on that one) or you are getting royally hosed.

So, you really think nobody else has commercial fished before?...or do you think anyone is buying what you're trying to sell.

duckmanJR

diggin4grouper wrote: »

as far as i know about 30 to 40% of it is eaten here in americal

we're not going with "as far as I know" ....:rotflmao

I'm still waiting to see it on a menu anywhere.....but I'm almost 59 years old so I may not live to see it.

diggin4grouper

duckmanJR wrote: »

Boat share on a little river netter... :rotflmao....You are either stupid ( we all have our opinions on that one) or you are getting royally hosed.

So, you really think nobody else has commercial fished before?...or do you think anyone is buying what you're trying to sell.

we do that and so do many other boats as it pays for the gas and any thing that goes wrong with the boat so that it can be fixed so no one is getting hosed or is stupid here but you please go back to new york and take the rest of your friends with you

ps this is what i will see from you This message is hidden because duckmanJR is on your ignore list. and after reading a few pages of your post that seem like the best thing because all you do is cause hate and discontent among the forum and you are not worth the time or effort

ANUMBER1

duckmanJR wrote: »

How much of that row...you know...fish eggs for the next spawn....are eaten here in America?...

And don't say something patently stupid like that witnessed 300 individual trips with 1 redfish.... like in the other post....just the truth will do.

Joe, how much honey consumed in the US is from here?
Joe, how much do we subsidize the sugar growers to keep them in business?
Joe, where was your TV/car/trolling motor/outboard manufactured?

duckmanJR

ANUMBER1 wrote: »

Joe, how much honey consumed in the US is from here?
Joe, how much do we subsidize the sugar growers to keep them in business?
Joe, where was your TV/car/trolling motor/outboard manufactured?

OK Art...I'll play.

For honey...I always buy local Orange blossom...not sure what junk anyone else eats.

Sugar.... No question that we shouldn't give them a dime...even though we've made the Fanjuls rich....and we should have made THEM clean their mess and build the STA's with their money and not taxpayers. That was / is all politics....other than payola....there may be some clandestine reason for why we prop up big sugar..:shrug

Well, Sadly I was a big OMC guy my whole life....had more Johnson and Evinrudes than the average person would own in two lifetimes for both work and pleasure.
By the late 1990's they had turned to making total junk....switched to what was the top award winning outboard in the HP I needed...and never looked back.
That first 140 had 3370 hours when I traded it...the new one (2012) is now over 1200.....

It comes down to buying quality...Japan is ahead in outboards.

And Art, the difference is that no matter how much honey is exported...it won't change the amount of bees that are born....

duckmanJR

diggin4grouper wrote: »

we do that and so do many other boats as it pays for the gas and any thing that goes wrong with the boat so that it can be fixed so no one is getting hosed or is stupid here but you please go back to new york and take the rest of your friends with you

ps this is what i will see from you This message is hidden because duckmanJR is on your ignore list. and after reading a few pages of your post that seem like the best thing because all you do is cause hate and discontent among the forum and you are not worth the time or effort

Looks like a KO! ....... :rotflmao

lemaymiami

Hey Duck...I've never owned anything other than a Johnrude --and that's since 1974... Yes, like quite a few others I got caught when OMC went bust in 2001 - but within two years I was lucky enough to get picked up by BRP -and I've been with them ever since.

Back to conservation matters.... we either properly protect our fisheries or we'll lose them forever -that's the bottom line. Anywhere in the world where netters are allowed to fish without restrictions -they end up putting themselves out of business in the pursuit of profits (which diminish in direct relation to how many fish are left...). The ironic thing is that fisheries conservation actually preserves commercial fisheries in the end by making sure that the resource isn't damaged by over-fishing. I have no wish to end reasonable commercial fishing efforts - but you can't let them damage the resource the way things went in the late seventies all the way through the 1980's..... period.

toomer

lemaymiami wrote: »

Hey Duck...I've never owned anything other than a Johnrude --and that's since 1974... Yes, like quite a few others I got caught when OMC went bust in 2001 - but within two years I was lucky enough to get picked up by BRP -and I've been with them ever since.

Back to conservation matters.... we either properly protect our fisheries or we'll lose them forever -that's the bottom line. Anywhere in the world where netters are allowed to fish without restrictions -they end up putting themselves out of business in the pursuit of profits (which diminish in direct relation to how many fish are left...). The ironic thing is that fisheries conservation actually preserves commercial fisheries in the end by making sure that the resource isn't damaged by over-fishing. I have no wish to end reasonable commercial fishing efforts - but you can't let them damage the resource the way things went in the late seventies all the way through the 1980's..... period.

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is what should unify both sides represented on this forum against what I see are two common enemies: 1) the preservationist/abolitionists and 2) the big commercialists. Might our biggest danger (as seems to be playing out with catch shares) be that those two reach a deal between the two of them that squashes the interests of us in the middle?

ANUMBER1

lemaymiami wrote: »

Hey Duck...I've never owned anything other than a Johnrude --and that's since 1974... Yes, like quite a few others I got caught when OMC went bust in 2001 - but within two years I was lucky enough to get picked up by BRP -and I've been with them ever since.

Back to conservation matters.... we either properly protect our fisheries or we'll lose them forever -that's the bottom line. Anywhere in the world where netters are allowed to fish without restrictions -they end up putting themselves out of business in the pursuit of profits (which diminish in direct relation to how many fish are left...). The ironic thing is that fisheries conservation actually preserves commercial fisheries in the end by making sure that the resource isn't damaged by over-fishing. I have no wish to end reasonable commercial fishing efforts - but you can't let them damage the resource the way things went in the late seventies all the way through the 1980's..... period.

And you can't make a reasonable argument against nets using the south Fl experience over a single operator in Horseshoe(insert your own west central Fl town here

---

).

ANUMBER1

ANUMBER1 wrote: »

And you can't make a reasonable argument against nets using the south Fl experience over a single operator in Horseshoe(insert your own west central Fl town here

---

).

Neither can Joe and while he is a smart feller, his experience is limited when it comes to how fisheries were conducted throughout the state.

lemaymiami

Gee.. nothing to say about the fleet of terribly effective high roller rigs that came from other states to join local fleets and just slaughter whatever fish was the target all those years ago?

You haven't seen a sign of that since the amendment went into effect and I'm sure that young anglers today have no idea just how bad it was back then.... In just a year or two those rigs actually totally stopped the spanish mackeral runs along the east coast north of the Palm Beaches (and the fall and spring mullet runs almost completely disappeared as well....) from ever making it down to south Florida where they'd been a staple forever, showing up each fall and staying all winter long. If you listen to the folks who complain now about the small operators that were put out of business back then you'd never hear about those big guys at all... Friends of mine reported that you could hear just how effective they were just listening to the radio traffic around the St. Lucie inlet (among others) where netters would remark that they were close to foundering coming in with 20, 30, or 40,000lbs of fish aboard from each trip.

One of the items about commercial fishing that I remember all too clearly was that market price depended directly on how good the fishing was. If you made good money at 50 cents a pound today you might have to take even more tomorrow since the price kept dropping the more fish were caught... That basic economic fact means that you'd have to hammer the fish even harder to make the same money in times of great abundance.... Add to that the fact that those boats cost money to run (and money to make that all important boat payment) so no one could afford to ever sit at the dock if there was the slightest opportunity to make money no matter how bad you were hitting one specie or other. That's one of the reasons that those out of state boys would flock here when the fishing was on - and our guys could be found over around Louisiana or up along the Atlantic coast as well...

ANUMBER1

lemaymiami wrote: »

Gee.. nothing to say about the fleet of terribly effective high roller rigs that came from other states to join local fleets and just slaughter whatever fish was the target all those years ago?

You haven't seen a sign of that since the amendment went into effect and I'm sure that young anglers today have no idea just how bad it was back then.... In just a year or two those rigs actually totally stopped the spanish mackeral runs along the east coast north of the Palm Beaches (and the fall and spring mullet runs almost completely disappeared as well....) from ever making it down to south Florida where they'd been a staple forever, showing up each fall and staying all winter long. If you listen to the folks who complain now about the small operators that were put out of business back then you'd never hear about those big guys at all... Friends of mine reported that you could hear just how effective they were just listening to the radio traffic around the St. Lucie inlet (among others) where netters would remark that they were close to foundering coming in with 20, 30, or 40,000lbs of fish aboard from each trip.

One of the items about commercial fishing that I remember all too clearly was that market price depended directly on how good the fishing was. If you made good money at 50 cents a pound today you might have to take even more tomorrow since the price kept dropping the more fish were caught... That basic economic fact means that you'd have to hammer the fish even harder to make the same money in times of great abundance.... Add to that the fact that those boats cost money to run (and money to make that all important boat payment) so no one could afford to ever sit at the dock if there was the slightest opportunity to make money no matter how bad you were hitting one specie or other. That's one of the reasons that those out of state boys would flock here when the fishing was on - and our guys could be found over around Louisiana or up along the Atlantic coast as well...

Bob, there really were no high roller rigs from other states to speak of(maybe some from La), but Fl. pretty much ruled that roost.
There were so feared that roller rigs were banned along the Atlantic Seaboard North of Fl.

I worked on a couple of those boats and for a couple of the kingfish high-liner Captains.

ANUMBER1

One time fishing out of Marathon the mackeral fishermen went on strike over the price for "strike caught caught fish".
Leo Cooper, who owned City Fish brought in five boats from Ft. Pierce to fish for .10 cent/lb, a small group of captains and crews assembled and went to City Fish to confront the Ft. Pierce boats.
Billy Tyner(who I worked for at the time) told the FP group that they weren't going to fish and they weren't going to bring any cheap mackerel to the docks in the Keys.

Got pretty tense before the popo showed, FP boats packed up and left that afternoon and a couple of days later we settled on a price and went fishing.

IMO, you don't really know much about the industry beyond what your handlers tell you and you know even less about the West Coast mullet fishery.

lemaymiami

I held a commercial ticket (hook and line) back when things were at their worst - so I can certainly tell you what the effects were.... The collapse of macks, king macks, etc. meant that no one down off of Miami had them available at all... As far as the gulf coast - I can remember when a 15" red or a 15" trout was a good catch down off the Everglades - and we hardly saw a pompano -ever. All that changed after the net ban. It took about three years for those species to start their comeback -things just got better and better ever since. I've worked a bit for some of the folks at Mote Marine (that did have a permit to work a small hand gill net) and I've seen how quickly it filled at any small creek mouth as we were sampling. No, I don't know that much about commercial netting -but you didn't have to know much to see what the effects were...