Say goodbye to Blueline Tilefish - new regulation starting Jan 1, 2021

John McKroid

How the heck did they decide on this?   Now a fish that is relatively more common than a Golden Tilefish will be less open for harvest.  By putting a 4 month a year time frame on when recreational anglers can fish for them ( during a time when the current is usually screaming making it impractical to target them) they will be fewer harvested.  And when one is accidentally hauled up during the other 8 months of the year?  Recovery from 500ft of barotrauma is not likely -- What a waste!   
https://myfwc.com/news/all-news/tilefish-1020/

MangroveMark

I have caught blueline tiles out of Boynton since the 1970's and from my experience would say that those are four of the slowest months of the year for catching them.

conchydong

As much as I hate regulations, Bluelines (Grays) have declined tremendously. 30 years ago, you could drop almost anywhere between 380'-500' off of the Lauderdale coastline and and catch 2 or more on almost every drop. Since the invention of spectra and the availability of GPS, almost everyone that fishes the area  acquired a deep drop set up.
Since these were the easiest deep fish to target, well, they were targeted by most just starting out in the deep drop game. I believe the measure is a bit extreme but we were lucky for many years as the SE Florida coast is the only place that they could be caught in State waters.

John McKroid

MangroveMark said:

I have caught blueline tiles out of Boynton since the 1970's and from my experience would say that those are four of the slowest months of the year for catching them.

Not just that, but with so many other good fish biting during those months, not worth the trouble now.

John McKroid

conchydong said:

As much as I hate regulations, Bluelines (Grays) have declined tremendously. 30 years ago, you could drop almost anywhere between 380'-500' off of the Lauderdale coastline and and catch 2 or more on almost every drop. Since the invention of spectra and the availability of GPS, almost everyone that fishes the area  acquired a deep drop set up.
Since these were the easiest deep fish to target, well, they were targeted by most just starting out in the deep drop game. I believe the measure is a bit extreme but we were lucky for many years as the SE Florida coast is the only place that they could be caught in State waters.

Regs are a good thing, but this is definitely a bit of an extreme response.  They should make a one-fish limit to prevent the waste of incidental catches.