Three anglers were standing in neck-deep water off a beach on the Florida panhandle, being circled by a 12-foot shark—the kind of shark that makes its living attacking swordfish, tuna, and other sharks. It was the next-to-last moment in a beach-fishing adventure none of them will forget, and it ended safely for all of them, including the shark.

On November 12, Travis Lucas and friends Joshua Smith and Ben Brandner caught and released a very large shortfin mako shark from the beach. It’s exceedingly rare to catch a mako from shore; they prefer deep water and the larger prey that live there. This was the first confirmed shore-caught mako at Cape San Blas, about an hour east of Panama City. The shark was released per the rules; harvesting Atlantic mako sharks has been prohibited since 2022 due to overfishing.

Lucas, Smith, and Brandner never expected to catch a mako, let alone one that’s about as big as they get. “We usually just target big species, like bull sharks,” Lucas recalled. A week earlier, they had caught a 12-foot dusky shark and a 13-foot great hammerhead.

The Hometown Sharkers Score Big

The group, “Hometown Sharkers” on their social media, specialize in overnight beach outings.
Lucas was set up with an Okuma Makaira 130 reel spooled with 200-pound Reaction Tackle braid, a 300-pound mono top shot, and a homemade 800-pound leader on a 7-foot Rainshadow rod. The 24/0 circle hook was baited with a chunk of a blacktip shark caught earlier in the day.

Lucas had dropped the bait from a kayak about 1,000 yards offshore at sunset and paddled back to camp. During the evening, “we ended up catching a smaller bull shark on another rod,” he said. After that, it was a calm, cool night on a quiet beach—until it wasn’t.

“We had actually dozed off,” Lucas said. “I woke up to the 130 screaming.” He got into his harness and immediately knew the fish was heavy, perhaps a tiger shark. “It started pulling pretty significant drag pretty effortlessly,” he said.

Ten minutes in, the fish “woke up” and began leaping in the moonlight, “pretty much back-to-back for three or four minutes in one position, and then again in the next,” Lucas said. Eventually, the acrobatics ended. The fish ran toward shore a couple of times, which made life easier for Lucas, and the fight was over in 35 minutes.

As the fish neared the beach, the anglers still didn’t know what they had caught. Maybe a hammerhead, they thought. When it reached the wash, they thought it may have been a great white. When they finally got a light on it, “there was a lot of screaming,” Lucas recalled.

Team Release

“Releasing that fish was one of the most memorable situations I’ve had,” he said. “We realized it was a mako. Josh runs out with the tail rope. I come out with bolt cutters and the hook remover. We get out there, assess the situation, get it unhooked, get the leader off of it. It was about 49 degrees, it was cold.”

Lucas’s wife, Flower, and the other guys’ girlfriends watched and held flashlights from the beach. The group began moving the mako to deeper water to ease its release. “So it’s pitch black outside. We get out past the sandbar, so we know she can swim off. She swims out 10 or 15 feet and comes back at us. She made three full circles around us before thrashing at the surface and then swimming off. It was definitely nerve-wracking.”

The group saw for themselves why makos are sometimes confused with, blue sharks. “They are in every sense of the word ‘blue sharks’,” Lucas said. “When the light hits them they’ll go from deep purple to blue, and it’s a color you’d never expect to see from an animal. It almost seems like it’s a holographic. They’re pretty wild looking. It’s definitely a once in a lifetime fish.”

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A jack commonly caught in Costa Rica and the Gulf of Mexico was recently landed off the coast of North Carolina. Officials at the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries established a new state record for the species: an Almaco Jack (Seriola rivoliana).  

Angler Matt Frattasio, of Massachusetts, caught the 26-pound, 15.6-ounce fast-growing fish near the D Wreck off Morehead City in early November. He was aboard Riptide Charters fishing in 80 feet of water, baiting with a live menhaden on 50-pound gear. There was no previous state record in North Carolina for almacos.

Frattasio’s fish measured 36.4 inches (fork length) and had a 26-inch girth. The fish was weighed and identified by fisheries staff at the Division of Marine Fisheries Headquarters in Morehead City. Almaco jacks are part of the Seriola genus (amberjacks) — not surprisingly, they look similar to an amberjack.

Almaco Jack or Amberjack?

Anglers can have a tough time differentiating the two. Here’s the trick: Almacos are deeper-bodied and less elongated than amberjacks. Also, check the dorsal fins. That second dorsal is higher than the first dorsal on amberjack, but it’s nearly twice as tall as the first dorsal on almaco jacks.

Record Almaco Jack Catches

In Georgia, the current state record almaco is just over 7 pounds, while Florida’s state record tops out at 35 pounds, 9 ounces. The all-tackle world record stands tall at 132 pounds, caught in 1964 in La Paz, Baja California, Mexico. Most IGFA men’s line-class records for the species hail from Costa Rica and Panama.

Still, some almaco jack world records sit completely vacant. Part of that might be because they’re misidentified or possibly it’s that anglers fast-track the great-tasting fish straight into the cooler. At least five women’s line-class records are empty, most of them for fly tackle. The All-Tackle Length fly and junior records are also wide open.

For other instances of warm-water fish catches in states farther north, check out Connecticut’s tarpon, Maryland’s barracuda, New Jersey’s king mackerel and Washington’s dorado.

The post A New Record for North Carolina appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

California’s state record swordfish was boated this fall by three dedicated and enthusiastic anglers. They like to think a fourth fisherman had a hand in their success, at least in spirit. Dillon Houston, Ezekiel Cruz, and Mason Karafa caught the swordfish on Oct. 27, a broadbill 68 pounds heavier than the previous California record.

They had spent the day fishing but not catching at La Jolla Canyon off San Diego. With the sun sinking in the sky, the moved to 9 Mile Bank, closer to the coast, where Houston — a co-owner of Brothers Sportfishing — last year met and became friends with Capt. Ron Ellis. A skipper from Santa Barbara who had relocated to San Diego, Ellis was lost at sea in February.

Help From a Friend

Houston, Cruz, and Karafa toasted his memory, dropped a squid-tipped hook nearly 2,000 feet, and within an hour had caught the 520-pound swordfish they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.

“We all looked at each other and said, ‘Capt. Ron had to have helped us do battle with that fish,’” Houston said.

The group fished from a 25-foot Davidson Bahia that usually sees bluefins, yellowfins, California yellowtail, mahi, and rockfish on Brothers Sportfishing charters. They only began swordfishing last year, so it’s no surprise they had never caught one this big. No one had, at least in California waters. The former state record fish weighed 452 pounds.

Using squid rigged on a J-hook and 12 pounds of lead, the group hooked up fairly quickly. After watching the rod tip intently for 10 minutes, Karafa jumped up and said, “we just got a bite,” Houston recalled. Karafa felt the rod come tight, and the 45-minute fight was on. A welder and son of a commercial swordfisherman from Chincoteague Island, Virginia, Karafa stayed on the rod throughout the fight.

They were able to unclip the sinker early in the fight, but the swordfish then sounded 900 feet (they watched it on the fishfinder). “When we got it back up, we saw it was a sword, and a big one at that,” Houston said.

The Challenges of Boating a Big Swordfish

The fish made a blistering run at the surface, then abruptly turned and charged the boat. As it thrashed near the stern and tried to spear the motor, Cruz attempted to secure it with the flying gaff, but the fiberglass pole broke on the fish’s bill and the gaff hook came out. The fish, meanwhile, got the line tangled around the motor.

Eventually the line was cleared, although the crew had to cut off three deep-drop lights to get the loop through the guides. Then, Cruz successfully gaffed the fish. Houston was at the helm and drove to the sword, the crew recovering line as they went. As they got close, it became apparent the fish was nearly finished. The flying gaff line had wrapped around the fish’s bill. With the fish expiring, “we gave it our all and it finally got it into the boat,” Houston said.

Along with all the other challenges of boating a record fish is finding a scale big enough to weigh it. Back at Dana Landing, the scale only went to 499 pounds. Phone calls were made and the group drove another half hour by boat to Chula Seafood at Driscoll Wharf, where the weight was recorded on a certified scale. The fish was processed, vacuum sealed, and split three ways, with plenty going to family and friends.

A Record Breaker

The record sword was caught on an 11/0 J-hook tipped with squid and tied to a 5-foot, 300-pound bite leader, followed by 200 feet of 100-pound mono, with 80-pound Izorline braid spooled on a Hooker Electric Shimano Tiagra 50-wide reel.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife certified the record Thanksgiving week. Big as it was, the record sword was only about half the size of the International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record. That fish, caught in Iquique, Chile, way back in 1953, weighed 1,182 pounds.

Houston noted the broken gaff, the combative fish, the tangles, and the sheer size of the fish, and marveled that the group prevailed. “It was insane, honestly,” he said. “Nothing was normal about the fish, from the start all the way to the end. If the stars didn’t align the way they did, we would have been fighting that thing all night.

“To this day, when we’re sitting having a beer, we say, ‘Thank you Capt. Ron for helping us find that fish,” he added. “We honestly think that even though he’s gone, we still feel like he’s out there. We honestly feel like if it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have landed that fish.”

The post New California State Record Swordfish appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Anglers fishing in Louisiana must follow new speckled trout regulations starting Monday, Nov. 20, 2023. The state’s past bag limit of 25 seatrout per day was shortened to 15 specks per angler, with guides and crew no longer allowed to box a limit while on a charter.

Secondly, a 12-incher is no longer a keeper. The old minimum size limit of 12 inches total length is gone, replaced with a new slot of 13 to 20 inches. Of note, two seatrout over the 20-inch max — overslot fish — can be kept as part of a daily bag limit.

“The timing probably isn’t the best, considering the number of casual anglers who fish the week [of Thanksgiving],” says Louisiana angler Todd Masson, who runs the popular Marsh Man Masson YouTube fishing channel. “We simply no longer have the population to support 25 fish at 12 inches. The change should have been made years ago, but the species is highly fecund and short-lived so the rebound should be rather quick.”

CCA Louisiana supports the new creel limit of 15 fish as a reasonable move in the spirit of conservation. “Fishery managers are quick to propose recreational creel and size limit adjustments, but recreational changes cannot be the only remedy,” said CCA Louisiana, in a statement. Other factors must be considered as part of the overall seatrout rebuilding plan, including coastwide and regional forage reduction, marine habitat and reef degradation, bycatch, fisheries restocking programs, stock evaluation protocols and programs, and ecosystem level management.

The new seatrout regulations are scheduled to sunset at midnight on Jan. 1, 2028. State scientists will provide an up-to-date stock assessment on seatrout before the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission’s April 2027 meeting. The updated assessment affords the commission the ability to modify the regulations, if needed.

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Researchers and scientists know surprisingly little about the migrations of many offshore sportfish. But with determined efforts by anglers to tag released fish for tracking, steady progress is happening in real time.

One example of fishermen-fueled research is the Dolphinfish Research Program that relies on anglers to tag mahi, but also report back captured tagged dolphinfish, with the goal to identify this gamefish’s long-distance migration routes. Over the last 16 years, 32,630 dorado were tagged and 784 were recaptured, according to the program.

Different billfish species, such as blue marlin, have also received major attention, thanks to the International Game Fish Association and supportive fishing teams.

The IGFA Great Marlin Race is a billfish research and conservation initiative that allows recreational anglers — armed with expensive satellite tag technology — to become citizen scientists and deploy tags on the billfish they catch. Each year the race takes place from Oct. 1 – Sept. 30. The winning team is decided by the tagged billfish that travels the farthest distance. But the race is just one part of it. The larger goal is for scientists, anglers, and policymakers to better understand billfish migration patterns and habitat utilization.

“The IGFA Great Marlin Race was established [in 2011] to involve the angling community in citizen science,” said IGFA President, Jason Schratwieser. “By coupling competitive spirit with conservation, we’re able to gather invaluable data that helps ensure the survival of these magnificent species. This year’s winners exemplify the heart of this program: a deep commitment to conservation and the betterment of sport fishing.”

The SAT tags deployed on marlin and sailfish transmit information to researchers at Stanford University who analyze and disseminate the data, leading to a better understanding of these incredible animals and how to better manage them. To date, the IGFA Great Marlin Race has deployed nearly 600 satellite tags on billfish around the world.

In 2023, a total of 59 satellite tags were deployed across five billfish species during 23 global tagging events. Often, these events might be billfish fishing tournaments, such as the Bermuda Triple Crown. While some tags are set to provide data for the 2023-2024 race, 29 tags surfaced during this year’s race. This year’s winner (2022-2023) was the Waste Knot fishing team, a longtime supporter of the program. The tag was deployed during the 2022 Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament, with the tag sponsored by Scott and Ven Poole of Waste Knot.

• First Place: The winning blue marlin, caught by Ven Poole and tagged by Scott Poole, traveled an impressive straight-line distance of 4,149 nautical miles from the US East Coast to the coast of Brazil. This route was this year’s longest — also the 5th longest in the program’s history and the 3rd longest for a blue marlin — with a total estimated track of 7,819 nm.
• Second Place: The runner-up, a blue marlin tagged aboard Stream Weaver during the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament and deployed by Bobby Schlegel, marked a straight distance of 2,543 nm, with an estimated total track of 3,689 nm.
• Third Place: The third place was claimed by a striped marlin tagged off New Zealand, sponsored and deployed by the crew of Trident, which traveled 1,545 nm in just 85 days.

The post Where Do Blue Marlin Go? appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Fish regulators will close the gag grouper season early this year in federal waters, leaving anglers scrambling to get in one last trip or two during any favorable weather windows. In South Atlantic federal waters, the gag grouper season closes on Oct. 23. For Gulf anglers, the gag season ends Oct. 19 in federal waters. The state of Florida will mirror federal regulations, closing state waters to gag grouper fishing on the same days in October.

“It’s been a good year for gag grouper,” says Capt. Jarrod Tuttle, of Driftwood Charters in Daytona Beach, Florida. “Fishing also gets better when its colder, as the grouper move in a bit closer. There are going to be some angry anglers about the early closure.”

In years past, recreational anglers blazed offshore, chasing oversized gag grouper late into the year. In the southeast, the winter months were prime time for bottom fishing, all the way up to December.

“This will be the first time that the recreational season has closed early for Gag in the South Atlantic,” says Kim Iverson, public information officer for the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. “This year’s closures for both the recreational and commercial sectors are due to the reduction catch limits. There’s also the annual spawning season closure for shallow water grouper in South Atlantic federal waters January 1 through April 30.”

The Gulf federal recreational gag season in the recent past, including 2021 and 2022, started on June 1 and was open until the end of the year, points out Dan Luers, with NOAA Fisheries. But gag grouper are currently undergoing overfishing in Atlantic and Gulf waters, according to NOAA, leading to tightened management plans and interim measures.

“I will 100 percent lose charters over the early closure,” says Capt. Ryan Harrington, of No Bananas Sportfishing in Tampa Bay, Florida. “Already, I’ve had about a dozen people cancel. Who knows how many more would have booked if the season was open until Dec 31.”

Harrington mentioned he’s noticing good numbers of gag grouper, especially inshore.  

“I fish for them year-round as bycatch,” he said. “I have seen as many this year as I have any other year. I’ve actually seen more of the small juvenile females on the flats than previously. I’m catching 6 to 12 gags on artificials every charter while targeting seatrout.”

Gag Grouper Rebuilding Plans

The Gulf gag grouper rebuilding plan is part of Amendment 56 to the Fishery Management Plan, developed by the Gulf Council. The Southeast Fishery Science Center calculated that 2023’s Gulf catch limit must not surpass 661,901 pounds to be consistent with Amendment 56’s timeline. (Amendment 56 has not officially been implemented yet, but NOAA Fisheries is required to implement the amendment by January 26, 2024.)

In the Atlantic, Amendment 53 to the Snapper Grouper Fishery Management Plan incorporates gag grouper’s rebuilding guidelines, running from 2023 to 2032. For 2023, the total annual catch limit is equal to the acceptable biological catch of 175,632 pounds gutted weight.

The post Gag Grouper Season Closes Early in October appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

When NOAA Fisheries announced that yet another major flaw had been discovered in its recreational data collection program, called the Marine Recreational Information Program — Fishing Effort Survey (MRIP-FES), it didn’t come entirely as a shock. After all, this data system that NOAA uses to estimate recreational (rec) catch and effort on various species has been reworked three times in the last 13 years and has been labeled “fatally flawed” by the National Academies of Sciences. It is known for producing results that leave rational people scratching their heads.

The agency confessed a couple of months ago in a series of dramatic conference calls with Congress, Councils and stakeholders that its data program is overstating recreational effort by 30 to 40 percent, and the more cynical among us were somewhat expecting it. As the latest iteration of the rec data system, the MRIP-FES was driving corrections in the allocation of allowable catch to the rec sector in some prized fisheries. NOAA Fisheries is loath to reallocate fisheries under any circumstances, and being forced to correct its allocations in favor of the rec sector because of its own data system was undoubtedly a bitter pill for a commercially oriented agency to swallow.

It was somewhat startling to note, however, that the flawed data is the result of how the questions were arranged in a survey that is randomly mailed to anglers. Nothing could more clearly drive home how fragile and unreliable this system is than that.

Fixing MRIP-FES

What happens next will be years of study on the problem. NOAA is very good at studying things until most people forget about them and then circling back to business as usual. Even if the agency can “fix” MRIP-FES, it will likely insist on calibrating the new data with all the suspect historical data that came before it. That is what the agency has done after previous tweaks, but it is simply impossible to understand how this is done with any confidence. How do you calibrate a historical number that was never right in the first place with a new number you have no confidence in when it is finally rolled out? 

Eventually, the recalibrated numbers — such as they are — will have to be plugged into new stock assessments, resulting in another round of corrections to allocations. In the Gulf, it will trigger another round of calibrations with data that the states are collecting on their recreational sectors. Before NOAA admitted errors with FES, calibrating between FES and Gulf state data was an extremely controversial exercise and state fisheries managers had been adamant for years that FES must be flawed based on the findings of their own data systems. Their arguments fell on deaf ears as the red snapper fisheries of Alabama and Mississippi in particular were mercilessly pared down by NOAA during the conversion of state data to FES data. In a step in the right direction, as of right now those two states are moving toward assuming recreational data collection for all federally managed species, not just red snapper. If they get there and all the Gulf states can adjust their programs to be compatible with each other, there might not be any need for calibrations with MRIP at all.

The Fishing Effort Survey Debacle

In the meantime, the FES debacle will take years to unravel and NOAA has no choice but to continue to use the flawed FES data as the best available science. Understandably, the fishery management councils are somewhat shellshocked at having to make decisions based on information known to be wrong for the foreseeable future.

While officials at the top of NOAA may truly believe the agency needs to take a hard look at how it manages the recreational sector — and some of them are saying the right things in private in the wake of the FES announcement — the bureaucratic core of the agency will no doubt wallpaper over the FES problem as quickly as possible. There will be another tweak, the questions will be rearranged, maybe the program will be renamed yet again, the surveys will go out and the rec data will magically be “right.” Until the next upheaval.

The biggest question to come out of this latest twist in federal fisheries management is why does Congress continue to put up with it? Why do coastal states continue to endure it? There are better ways to do this.

Give Power to the States

The West Coast states rejected the federal data system decades ago and collect all recreational angling data with their own systems. Every Gulf Coast state has developed recreational data programs at least for their red snapper fisheries that are much more hands-on than anything NOAA could implement. After having their concerns over FES data dismissed out of hand, the states of Alabama and Mississippi should be leading the charge to abandon the federal system once and for all. The South Atlantic states have been staring down the threat of massive bottom closures due to erroneous bycatch data based largely on FES — why would anyone in those states continue to leave their fate in the hands of an agency that has done nothing to earn their trust?

The answer, like so many things, usually comes down to funding but that is not as insurmountable as it may seem. Like many federal agencies, NOAA is receiving a huge injection of funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, some of which could be applied here. Money currently being wasted on MRIP could be redirected to the states to carry out these responsibilities. State fishery agencies are not fond of going to their legislatures and asking for funding, but the recreational angling community has never shied away from paying for its management. Particularly when the alternative has no track record of success but does have an unwavering penchant for wielding its authority like a sledgehammer.

This latest break in the federal fisheries management system offers a brief window of opportunity to get out of this repeating, dysfunctional cycle, and it is up to anglers to motivate their states agencies and elected officials to seize it. Otherwise, we will no doubt relive the same miserable experiences of the last many decades, just waiting for NOAA’s next shoe to drop.

About the Author: Ted Venker is the Vice President and Conservation Director of the Coastal Conservation Association.

The post Groundhog Day in Federal Fisheries Management appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

On August 23, 2023, a young Florida angler with an adventurous spirit and a fondness for catching big fish on the smallest of vessels has achieved a personal milestone off the Gulf coast: he caught, fought, and boated a 100-pound swordfish from a personal watercraft.

Emmanuel Williams, 23, of Miami, drove 14 hours to Venice, Louisiana, to get on the water at sun-up on August 20. He then motored 20 miles to open water and another 20 to the fishing grounds on his 12-foot Sea-Doo FishPro Trophy, a craft built for fishing. He was on a quest to make good on a plan he had announced four years earlier: to be the first person to catch a sword from a PWC.

A Swordfishing Group Effort

Williams was accompanied by his friend Capt. Sebastian Noel on the trip. In Venice, they connected with Capt. Blake Rigby, who provided the local know-how and accompanied Williams and Noel from his boat. Tyler Fischer was the fourth member of the party, shooting content as the adventure unfolded.

“Capt. Blake got us rigged up, and Sebastian hopped on the ‘ski with me,” he recalled. “We sent our bait down to about 1,400 feet of water.” They were using a 12/0 J-hook tipped with a squid, 60-pound braid with a 150-foot, 250-pound leader, a Shimano Talica 50 and a Check’n Bottom custom rod. The wait began, and the anglers’ patience was tested.

“I was pretty anxious and really wanted to get this fish,” Williams said. “After a couple hours of waiting morale got a little low, but we ground it out, and then we got that bite and cranked down on that fish. I was super excited to be locked in battle with this fish.”

The lead came to the rod and was removed. “Now we were directly connected with that fish. I told Sebastian, get ready with that gaff, this is our time, this is our moment. We saw that white glow of the fish coming up. I’m screaming at Sebastian, ‘Stick him, stick him, stick him!’ I couldn’t fathom that fish getting away.”

The Swordfish End Game

It did not get away. “Sebastian put the first gaff in him. I followed up with the second gaff, and then the fish realized what was happening and went absolutely ballistic — thrashing its bill, swinging its tail non-stop, and literally pulling the Sea-Doo in circles.

“And then that was it,” he said. “We definitely rejoiced. We were all very happy. As far as I know this was the first swordfish ever landed on a PWC, and it was documented.” They transferred the fish to Rigby’s cooler and began the long run back to their houseboat in Venice. The sea was flat while they fished, but by 10 a.m., “it was rolling 3 to fives the whole way,” he said. “But it wasn’t a bad ride home, knowing we completed the mission.” They cleaned and filleted the fish.

Williams is a content creator who works with Sea-Doo, Salt Life, and XTRATUF, and his YouTube channel is not to be missed. Fishing from a PWC is a personal choice that feels closer to the sea and the fish, he said.

The Allure of PWC Fishing

“I could definitely get a boat if I wanted to,” he said. “The first time I ever fished offshore was on a PWC. I just fell in love with the process and the challenge. It’s another kind of connection with the water, and it’s more intimate. There’s definitely more of a challenge to it. Just the weather — PWCs can handle super rough weather, but it’s a lot when you’re mixing weather with fishing.

“Space is a thing — you can’t bring a whole arsenal of rods. But in other ways, you kind of have an advantage, because if I happen to see, say, a school of tuna, I can roll up on them more quietly than a boat could.”

Twenty-three is young to have achieved a major goal, but Williams has further aspirations, all from the seat of the Sea-Doo.

“I have a lot of big plans when it comes to fishing,” he said. “I just want to travel and catch unique fish. I definitely want to do big tuna, both yellowfin and bluefin, and black and blue marlin. Those are the next fish I’m going after.”

You can see Williams’ catch the first-ever swordfish on a personal watercraft in this video on iBelongOutdoors.

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Draft Amendment 15 (PDF here) to the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Fishery Management Plan is a dense, technical document with a short fuse that is seeking an alarming objective. This federal management action is proposing to modify or eliminate four areas that currently restrict or prohibit commercial longline fishing due to the indiscriminate nature of the gear and the excessive mortality it causes to non-target and juvenile species, as well as overfished target species.

The closed areas, known as Mid-Atlantic shark, Charleston Bump, East Florida Coast, and DeSoto Canyon, have been in place for decades. Not unexpectedly, the removal of hundreds of thousands of longline hooks has resulted in tangible recoveries of iconic sportfish populations in some areas. In one area, the East Florida Coast Pelagic Longline Closed Area, an unexpected benefit has been the establishment of the nation’s best sailfish fishery. The direct economic benefit to recreational fishing-related businesses in Florida from this catch-and-release fishery has been nothing short of remarkable. Even though this particular zone was created to be a conservation area for juvenile swordfish — and was never intended to be exposed again to commercial plunder — it has been the object of repeated attempts to reintroduce longlining.

The Push to Reintroduce Longlining

It’s an unfortunate reality that as an area recovers back to health, pressure mounts to reinstate the very commercial gear that drove the area into an overfished condition in the first place. Previous attempts to allow longlines back into closed areas have included ham-handed charades by longline operators pretending to be marine science entities and using the federal exempted fishing permit process to propose “research” with longlines.

In one case, the permit would have granted a single longline company exclusive access to drop longlines in a closed area for three years and sell all the legal fish it caught under the permit. In essence, it was pursuing an Exclusive Longlining Permit and it almost worked. In that instance, it took months of work and the combined effort of the marine conservation community to successfully oppose the permit and safeguard the East Florida Coast Pelagic Longline Closed Area.

Amendment 15 is a slightly different animal. NOAA Fisheries contends that closed areas do not provide critical fishery-dependent data, which includes data that are collected during normal fishing operations. The agency says this lack of fishery-dependent data complicates efforts to assess the effectiveness of the conservation zones and the model they have created to evaluate the zones requires the use of longlines. In other words, they can’t know how well the zones are working to protect targeted species from longlines unless longlines are reintroduced to see what protected species they kill.

To be fair, NOAA is asking the right questions:

• Are the conservation zones working?
• Are they in the right places?
• Are they achieving the management goals?
• Do the zones need to be modified or moved to be more effective?
• Are changes in ocean conditions altering migration patterns and distribution of marine species?

Those are valid scientific inquiries that should be made about any closed area.

Longline Fishing Has Little Support from Public

But while evaluating the effectiveness of the areas is one thing, the verdict on longlines came back a long time ago. It’s a dirty, indiscriminate gear. The thousands of baited hooks attached to miles of longline don’t know the difference between a swordfish and a sea turtle, or between an adult tuna and a juvenile billfish. Few things caught with it are viable to be released alive. When the gear was removed, an incredible, economically vibrant sailfish fishery appeared off the East Coast of Florida. If it is allowed back, it is only a matter of time before it overwhelms the resources that are subjected to it and valuable, sustainable recreational fisheries will disappear, too.

There is more focus than ever on the health of the oceans, and it is often difficult to reconcile this country’s rhetoric on marine conservation with NOAA’s continuing infatuation with indiscriminate commercial gear such as longlines and trawls. The goals of Amendment 15 may be valid, but the proposed means to attain them with longlines are flawed.

NOAA Fisheries will not get the support of the recreational angling community and the public at large for research efforts like this — no matter how practical — if the goal is to justify reintroducing dirty gear. Amendment 15 should take advantage of less destructive commercial gear like buoy gear and bandit rigs while evaluating the effectiveness of those conservation zones. Maintaining or improving that effectiveness should be the paramount goal, not finding a way to allow longlines back in to wreak havoc.

Proposals like Amendment 15 (submit your own comments here) are frustrating to the marine conservation community because they showcase over and over the agency’s never-ending embrace of the most indiscriminate, destructive gear in the ocean. There are better ways to research these conservation zones than using this horrendous gear. Amendment 15 may very well be a necessary evaluation of conservation zones, but NOAA’s insistence on reintroducing longlines — even in a supposed research capacity — makes this proposal as suspect as an Exclusive Longlining Permit.

About the Author: Ted Venker is the Vice President and Conservation Director of the Coastal Conservation Association.

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Ask Beau Leaman about beginner’s luck. The Santa Clarita, California, salesman was on his first fishing trip when he caught a potential world-record-breaking fish. Even more amazing, Leaman’s catch was of an extremely rare fish called an opah (Lampris guttatus). “It really was a blessing,” Leaman says.

Leaman was on an overnight tuna trip on the headboat Horizon out of San Diego, California. “I was with a group from church and some friends,” Leaman explains. Although this was Leaman’s first time on the ocean, he had experience trout fishing in lakes and streams. Leaman laughs, “I thought we were going to find some fish and cast spinning rods.”

Once he was on the boat, it didn’t take long for Leaman to realize he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. “I have never tried to sleep on a boat,” he starts. The rolly, noisy ride had Leaman tossing and turning. Up on deck, the scene was equally unsettling. 

The crowd was a mixture of families and first-time anglers, along with grizzled veterans you’d expect to see on a party boat. “There were guys with tattoos of fish and hooks,” Leaman marvels. He recalls one angler showed him pictures of a 300-pound tuna.

Leaman describes another angler pacing back and forth, staring at the ocean all night. “Holy cow, what kind of environment am I getting myself into?” he remembers.

When the boat stopped, Leaman had more surprises. “I didn’t know we were fishing with live bait,” he says. Leaman rented two rods: a lighter rod for live bait and a heavier rod for deep jigging. “The mates showed us how to hook the live bait and people in our group had experience,” Leaman says.

Still, Leaman spent a lot of time tangled with other anglers. At one point, he lost track of his fishing rod. “I was searching all over the boat looking for my rod.” Eventually he found his rod and marked it with a yellow ribbon. By late afternoon, the highlight of the day was a bonito Leaman hooked with another angler. “Nothing much was going on,” he says.

When the captain announced he was marking fish 30 feet below the boat, experienced anglers grabbed the light live-bait rods. Leaman decided to use his heavier jigging rod. “I figured I would warm up by jigging a lure from 300 feet,” he explains.

Leaman watched the depth-marked line leave his reel until his lure reached 300 feet. “I felt a bonk,” Leaman remembers. When he started cranking the reel handle, he found the line was stuck. “I thought I was snagged on a rock ,” he says. Leaman knew the water was too deep for a snag, so he continued to try to turn the reel handle. 

“I didn’t want to cry wolf,” he laughs, so he continued to struggle with the reel in silence. Eventually a friend asked if everything was okay. “The line was tight, but nothing was pulling. I felt steady, heavy pressure.” 

After other anglers confirmed Leaman must be hooked to a large fish, the crew started to buzz with excitement. In a few minutes, the captain was standing next to Leaman coaching him to fight the fish. 

At one point, the fish dashed to the bow and then ran to the stern. Leaman says, “The captain took the rod and helped me weave in and out of the other anglers.” Mayhem ensued with anglers yelling and shuffling while Leaman fought his fish.

When the huge fish surfaced, the captain yelled for gaffs. Four deckhands worked together to secure the big round fish and drag it onboard. 

“I was shocked,” Leaman says. A bystander remarked the strange fish looked like something engineered by the government. An opah is shaped like an angel fish with flat, silver sides mottled with shades of red and speckled in white spots. Sometimes these fish are also called moonfish.

“The fish had a huge eye and was covered in armor,” Leaman adds. Several places on the fish showed bites from cookie-cutter sharks. Leaman reflects, “There is so much grandness in the fish; I couldn’t help thinking of God’s creativity and power.”

Back at H&M Landing, the Opah weighed 188.6 pounds. The previous world record, set by Joe Ludlow in 2014 at San Quintin, Mexico, was 180 pounds, 12 ounces. Of course, the captain’s assistance and the shark bites could be ruled violations of International Game Fish Association rules, but the opah is still the biggest recorded rod and reel catch for this species. 

Leaman laughs, “My wife asked, ‘Why couldn’t you catch a normal fish?’” Leaman’s already shared the meat with friends and he’s looking online for opah recipes.

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