Louisiana territorial waters and snapper
 

I read that the season is currently open year round fir red snappers in the 3 mile Louisiana territorial area. My friend is hounding me to put together a charter trip. Where is the best place to go out of to catch snapper that close in and when is it good/not good to plan a charter? I'd appreciate any advice.

Most charter captains cannot catch snapper right now due to them having federal reef fish permits. They can only catch red snapper during federal snapper season

Only places you can catch red snapper in the state waters is grand isle and Venice

I'm pretty sure that Capt. Hoop does not have a federal permit for his bay boat. You could talk to him possibly.

No Charter Captain can legally catch state water red snapper in the state of Louisiana. The Federal Regulations have rule 30B that says that federally permitted charter captains have to obey the Federal regulations and cannot participate in the State Water season. The State of Louisiana has a statue in place that says in order for a Charter Captain to catch federally managed species (regardless if they are in state or federal waters), he/she must be in possession of the Federal Permits.

All Louisiana Charter Captains have been locked out of the Red Snapper fishery. The Louisiana FLeet has generally been against the Sector Separation plan but it is these actions that has caused a shift in that sentiment.

I thought it was the boat that was had the reef fish permit not the captain? If what you said is true how come I have seen several captains post pictures on facebook of clients with red snapper?

hey, lets hire another politician!

The permit is assigned to the vessel. Can the Captain run your boat, sure he can but as soon as he does so for any type of compensation it is considered a charter trip. If it is a charter trip then he has to have the permits.

There were several captains that jumped on the State Water Season at the beginning of the turmoil. Most have been properly "educated" at this point, in fact WLF put out a couple of press releases on it back in July.

Like you I was seeing a lot of those pictures, I do not see them any more, partially because WLF is using the web postings to further their "education".

Meaux, it is very confusing that is why WLF has only made a few arrest, the rest have been warnings but because of those violations NMFS is now beginning to question the validity of the LACREEL numbers so they are tightening down on it.

I am sure that you are aware of the 30B rule. If I find time I can dig up the state statue but trust me, I was just in Mobile, Al arguing these points yesterday.

From WLF June 5, 2014 press release. I would have to look up the actual statue as it is not quoted in the press release.
....
....
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries News

LDWF Reminds Charter Captains about Federal Reef Fish Permit Requirements

June 4, 2014 – The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries would like to clarify the permit requirements for charter boat captains fishing for reef fish in state and federal waters.

Any vessel being operated as a charter or headboat and landing reef fish in Louisiana is required to have a valid federal charter vessel / headboat reef fish permit, regardless of where these fish were caught (state or federal waters). This permit must have been issued to the vessel and must be on board the vessel and in immediate possession. Additionally, a valid Louisiana charter boat license shall be in the possession of the captain.

The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is charged with managing and protecting Louisiana's abundant natural resources. For more information, visit us at www.wlf.louisiana.gov on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ldwffb or follow us on Twitter @LDWF.

For press inquiries please contact Rene LeBreton at rlebreton@wlf.la.gov or (504) 286-8745.

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Yeah I know the regs, I was just asking a question, not really questioning your statement. So whats the LCBA's stance on sector separation?

Many have been on the fence but more and more of the membership is turning toward Sector Separation as the only fix that is currently on the table so they are willing to give it a try.

I was at Gulf Council yesterday and it appears likely that the vote is in favor of SS with a 9 to 7 vote. It seems that everyone already has their minds made up. There was talk of adding a 3 or 5 year sunset clause so that it would have to be ratified once again after a working review. HOWEVER, I was led to believe that at least some of the Gulf States are lined up to file a court action on various procedural matters to stop SS should it be voted in.

Regional Management is back on the table and I am listening to them discuss it as I type this. So there is great confusion that no one seems to have the answer to. If SS is voted in today is it the rule of the land? If Regional Management continues forward and is ratified by the March 2015 meeting; does it then supersede SS?

One thing seems certain, as of right now, Louisiana's Charter Boats will most likely be locked out of the Red Snapper fishery again for 2015. So recreational anglers that do not own boats and have chosen to hire a boat to take them out will once again be locked out of catching the endangered red snapper.

Has anyone kept snapper in the 3 to 10 mile grey zone? Out of fourchon? Caught a lot of snapper around that area buy was too scared to keep them

Yeh there is plenty of people keeping them from there and when you consider that a 30+ pound Red Snapper won Faux Pas ................... well let's just say if you believe that those fish came from the 10 mile limit, I have Aladin's lamp to sell you.

During the height of the summer there were a couple of instances where the GC wrote a few tickets but I have not heard of anything lately. It is still a disputed territory so you will be taking your chances.

Louisiana territorial waters and snapper
 

If they will still be locked out what is the reasoning for support of amendment 40? Why not band with the recs for better management instead of taking some of our already shortened season?

Because of a comment that Robin Rykers just made in testimony. They have revived Amendment 39 at this meeting but already this morning they are trying to kick the can down the road and all he is hearing is reasons why IT (regional management) WILL NOT WORK. It could be two more years before they work out Regional Management.

Personally that is my preferred option. But you are a business person if something happened in your industry that had you locked out of your major market, would you not have to consider all options on the table and get back to business while you work on something better?

Do you know why we do not have regional management now? It is because Florida has a governors election coming and their Governor did not want to negotiate over 2% points of quota and refuses to do so until after the election because he did not want to look week prior to the election. So something as simple as this has stalled Regional Management and allowed SS to move forward. As a business who was willing to take on the hurt in hopes of regional management, I have to ask which state has a Governors election coming up next that will stall Regional Management?

There have been lies told on both sides of this issue and just know that somewhere in the middle is the truth. Can I ask you why you are opposed to Sector Separation?

If 40 passes today the charter boats would be back into the fishery this June while they continue to work on Regional Management. If we continue to be locked out it is because once again someone decides to stall it in court.

Another thing that you have to consider is that we have all be fairly happy with WLF as of right now. I believe that they have done a fairly good job overall and have an open door policy for any issues. However I remember administrations of the past and if they do not get something done soon, there is going to be a new administration in Louisiana to finish this out, what will it look like? What support will either of the groups have?

Please do not take anything that I say argumentative I actually love the discussion.

Thanks for the clarification, it's sad , but sadly not surprising the mess the gov't has made of this....

"endangered red snapper!!!" too funny! Just like the "endangered" mosquitos! 8)

I do too. I will respond after I finish bush hogging some fields

Amendment 40 just passed 10 to 7. Sector Separation.

In laymens terms can you you explaing sector seperation. And thanks for taking the time out to discuss this.

Admen. 40 will it help the rec. Side or is it more for the charter boat ect?

right now the red snapper allocation is divided into two groups rec and commercial. Next year since this passed It will be divided into 3. While the commercial fishermen will retain their share of the quota, the recreational angler and charter/headboats will split the remaining share. So this in essence reduces further the amount of days recreational fishermen will get for federal red snapper season, while at the same time expanding the number of days that charter boats/headboats will get because they now have their own quota. So I guess I will just continue to hide my snapper under the cocaine...:smokin:

These are the facts, does not necessarily mean that I agree with them or support them.

There have been three crises in the Federal fishing regulation world. One is that their data sucks. Two is that there is no way to control or know how many purely recreational anglers there are and three - we are all seeing an explosion in fish but the federal law says that they fish are not rebuild until you have a healthy stock of all year classes. Red Snapper live about 30 years.

Because the stock is not considered rebuild yet by law (year classes of fish) we are still under strict management.

Because NMFS data SUCKS they have no way of knowing how many people fish on any day or how many fish are caught so they use a huge (20%) error rate to the good of the fish to shorten the season. Their survey methods are horrible but it is what they use.

For years NMFS has been preaching that they need better data and in todays political climate that almost always comes down to some form of limited access. IE: you would need tags or some other form of stricter management. The purely recreational politico groups and the purely recreational angler as a group has resisted all attempts to this point to have stricter management so the Feds have responded by shortening the seasons to make sure that too many fish are not harvested. I can't blame you, I don't want to be told that I have to run to Walmart to buy a tag before I go fishing. I do fish recreationally when I'm not working.

The Charter boats are currently lumped by law with the recreational folks because we do not sell our catch. We bring "recreational" anglers fishing. The charter boats are a finite group because our licenses are under moratorium. A large group of the charter boats have said that they would agree to stricter management if they could get more days fishing. (get rid of the error rate and provide better data)

Sector Separation looks at the PERCENTAGE of the recreational quota that the charter boats have historically caught and gives that PERCENTAGE in the form of pounds to the finite number of charter boats remaining. The remaining PERCENTAGE would remain with the purely recreational group. The charter boats would harvest out of their PERCENTAGE until it is gone and would have to do things such as submit to fish counts, inspections and daily trip reports so that each fish caught could be counted. So what it does has the possibility of being good for the charter boats, especially since we have been locked out of the fishery since the states have gone inconsistent with the federal regulations. In Louisiana the Charter boats and ONLY the charter boats were restricted to 9 days of fishing. The purely recreational crowd has been able to fish 365.

The remaining percentage (purely recreational) would be out there waiting for a better management plan to be offered. Currently it is predicted that you would have a federal season of about a week. Should it not go through you would not be able to harvest any more fish form the federal point of view because the charter boats would be fishing the same days and harvesting the same percentage of the single quota.

This is not something that the Louisiana Charter Boats wanted as a whole. We stood with WLF when they went inconsistent knowing that we would be the only group that suffered, however Louisiana's actions were designed to get our senators involved to change the law so that all of this would go away. They did not listen, they are too worried about running campaigns. So for the last couple of years it has been the charter boats and ONLY the charter boats that have been locked out of the fishery. This would get us back in while they are still fighting on other things like Regional Management. Louisiana says they have a better data system but to date the feds have not allowed the states to split and manage their own fishery.

Long but hope it answers some questions.

no way to sugar coat it
 

this absolutely screws the recreational fisherman running his own boat. I know folks that have been digging into this issue to connect the dots and the offshore charter fisherman are in bed with the environmental groups on this one- money from the Environmental Defense Fund and Ocean Conservancy is being funneled to seafood groups and charter associations.

here is a link that outlines some of the players involved

http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/ind...5-4b349e5a0d7e

Dang that sucks for us rec. Guys....what ever happen to the fall snapper season this year?

I think the simplest solution is to reclassify the recreational snapper charter boats as a separate class and quota and that solves everything, there will be no more seasons so short by the time you get to the launch the season is closing and its a fair solution all around.

commercials get 50%
recreational charters get 30%
non for hire recreationals get 20%

and reduce the built in error factor on quota estimates down to 10%

These numbers are fictional - for demonstration only

Meaux, this is where the argument comes in with a lot of folks. Purely on the surface it does not give the rec crowd fewer days. For example, lets say the recreational sector would be given 50K pounds and there is no SS. The season is figured with the 140 Louisiana permitted charter boats and the thousands of recreational anglers we take fishing, predicted to harvest X amount of fish because we are counted separately as part of the total. So lets say they figure on a 10 day season. But in that 10 day season is figured a lot of "uncertainty" and currently they apply a 20% error rate.

For argument sake, lets say SS splits the quota 50/50 so now the charter boats get 25K pounds. Because they agree to stricter management they loose the 20% rate of uncertainty. So yes they would get more than 10 days and it would theoretically prevent future overages . The purely rec would get the same number of days that they would have previously gotten 10 days in this example, the total poundage would be less but you are no longer counting the fish harvested on a charter boat, it is subtracted from a different total. The error rate from bad data is still there so there could be emergency closures, you could go over the allowed amount which would mean you would have to pay those fish back the following year, etc.

From a business aspect I am coming to believe it is a good system. However I believe that it is also a pandora's box and we should proceed very carefully. I would much rather be managed by my State who seems to have a handle on what is going on but they have failed miserably in getting that done, thus forcing many into SS since it is the only game in town right now.

You are correct, this movement started with a major drive from groups supported by EDF, this is the reason that it was not widely accepted. The initial proposal also included IFQs, etc. All things that your local captains did not support.

Clear up one thing, there are 3 groups that I am aware of the EDF is funding to push their agenda. NONE of the State Associations that I am aware of has received funding from them and I can tell you with 100% certainty that LCBA has not received a dime from them and has in the past even turned down a grant because EDF was partially funding the grant.

So LCBA didn't take money directly from EDF, but are willing to support their agenda....got it.
Let that sink in folks...private recs were sold out to enviro liberal agenda.

Actually LCBA has not taken a stance on this issue since as a whole it supported the State of Louisiana going inconsistent. That move failed to achieve its objective. While EDF probably does still support this move, it is no longer their agenda because we have been successful in getting intersector trading and individual quotas taken out of it at this time. LCBA looks at it as a whole as an individual business decision for each business owner.

I personally don't like it but WLF has placed us where we are today and the Feds are the only ones offering a solution.

I like to approach this as a discussion, you took you one line snipe, please provide the solution that is better and has a possibility of passing the regulator requirements of MSA. I know that it is a passionate subject but as someone once said, this is serious times in need of serious people.

A Fed solution from a council who can't manage? Everyone needs to support the conservation groups so this can be handled in federal court. The solution is getting Congress to force the council into accepting states' data. I just hope that regional mgmt passes in my lifetime, because the Gulf Council has shown they are worthless. It's time for WLF to be in charge of our fishery.

That is a statement I can agree with 100%. But until you can get our federal politicians to bring the issue to the floor what are we suppose to do?
In a recent meeting with Landrieu's office they admitted that fixing this was a bi partisan issue but neither party was willing to call for a vote on the solution because neither wanted to give the other party something to crow about during the election. So we are stuck where we are and no one gives a damn because you are going to vote for them anyway. There will always be some election or some other crisis that pushes this to the rear.


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As a business man I understand you need to do what you can to keep your business afloat, and I respect that. But Im sure you are going out on a 8-12hr summer trip and targeting more than the 12 red snapper it takes 20 min to put in your boat. They are saying you guys will get around 40% of the shared quota so taking last years numbers, if the quotas are the same, 1.5 million boaters will now split 3 million lbs and 1300 boats will split 2 million lbs approximately. Since we got a whole 9 days with 5.1 million lbs we are looking at 4-5 days, and thats if they are feeling generous. They need to focus on better data collection instead of putting a bandaid on a compound fracture.

I agree that WLF has been doing a great job the last few years and I hope that will continue. My fears are that this will expand to AJs, grouper, etc, and by opening this door we as recreational fisherman will be shut out by the people with money that encourage the gulf council to vote this way.

This is a very astute analysis.

Meaux, you are correct but with the increased weights as the snapper grow, if we do not separate and the quota stays the same, we will likely only have that same 6 day season unless the stock assessment gives us an increase. The math does not change, just the rhetoric. Don't forget you have 365, it is only the CFH that has the decreased season.

Last year they used a little over a 7 pound average. I can assure you that I brought back nothing under 12 pounds unless a storm was running me in. This year look for the average weight to be even larger. As you work the numbers one of the things that you have to realize is that the boats on our coast for the most part do run 8 to 12 hour trips but when you consider the Gulf as a whole, most of the charter boats from Alabama, east are what I call "tourist" boats, they run 4 to 6 hour tours with full boats and they run up to 3 trips a day. That is where it appears that the CFH number becomes inflated. Remember, even though the data is bad, they do have separate counts on the charter boats as we get weekly calls on our trips. So the numbers are somewhere near accurate providing the captain gave accurate trip counts.

Im going from memory here and I'm old but I seem to recall that the last number that I heard is that Louisiana is recorded as harvesting somewhere around 14% of the snapper in the Rec sector. Seems low but it is because of our business model where we typically run one trip a day.

I should have learned my lesson and not left the meeting early because I am understanding that one of the representatives from Alabama offered an amendment to begin the "framework" to reduce the snapper catch to 1 per person. What BS.

This is why I say from a business standpoint, we have to explore SS until we can get our politicians off their *** to fix this. What Johnnie Green did can only make sense if you apply it to a "tourist" model in an area where they do not have **** to catch to start with and can only be an attempt to extend whatever season we get further so they can get more "tourist" trips. I know that I sound like I am talking out of both sides of my mouth but Regional Management is the only way to go. I will personally look forward to some stability even if it is in the form of SS until such time we can get Regional Management.

If I lived on the east side I would be more apt to take advantage of the 365 days, but it takes me about 3.5hrs to get to GI and 4 to get to Venice, so between weather, distance, and the fact I run a 24ft bay boat I probably only snapper fish 3-5 times a year anyway. When I go offshore with friends we generally go straight for the pelagics. I do agree regional management is the only way to go, I just wish there was somebody with enough money/power to convince those yahoos on the council that.

heres the list of who voted what
http://thefra.org/gulf-council-passe...or-separation/

the fra is already takling about a lawsuit, as well they should since a couple of voting members stand to profit from a longer CFH season
http://www.al.com/outdoors/index.ssf..._splittin.html

A law suit brought by the States or from someone with a budget like CCA could cause issues, the FRA, not so much.

I really think that this is the best thing that could have happened. It has forced the states to drop their attitudes and come together to get RM moving forward. The best course could be to let this ride so that the motivation does not go away.

I was not there today but was on the podcast, I am curious about Robert Rykers (Texas Parks) comment that while Regional Management had been resurrected 'all he had heard all day was how it would not work'. I don't know what politics were being played in the halls but am very curious.

I believe that one of the most important comments that was made here today and seemed to have passed right over everyone's head was the fact that we have met with our federal officials (its election time) and was told that they (both democrat and republican) refused to bring legislative relief to the floor because neither wanted the other to take credit prior to the election!!!! This is suppose to be Of The People, For The People, By The People.

Pure politics failure but we have become accustomed to that.

Just a heads up that i got from another captain. If you are going out and take someone else along to help w/ fuel ,bring the beer etc. You have now just become commercial.
Make sure that no communication on line shows such.

No action taken
 

Eman, that issue came up at the Alabama meeting under the agenda action of redefining the definition of charter fishing. Th discussion and the rule proposed by the law enforcement committee would have done just that. The proposed new definition went something along the lines of ........ if you received anything of substance ..... in exchange for the trip.

Council member Corky Parent (sp) asked this very question and he was told that a true "cost sharing" trip would not violate this definition.

The tension was high in the room waiting on 40 to come around so this agenda item was tabled with no action taken.

So is it consider "illegal" if friends where to share expenses for fuel ect.?