When I was in high school and just out of high school, we could fish the marker 56 area and right across the ship channel from there and fill up as many ice chests as you wanted with Reds and Specks. Not big ones though.
This was still during the gill net and strike net days. But there were just a few netters. In the early 80's, the oil boom went bust.
That's when everyone who couldn't find another job went to commercial shrimping and fishing.
The lake got flooded with people gill netting and strike netting cause it was easy money, just like the oyster dredging is today. Easy money. If they go back to tonging, you won't see 1/3 of the oyster fishermen there are now.
I have been fishing before and strike net boats come and set nets in a circle around us, then run their boat around inside the net to run the fish to the nets. That was the first summer I ever saw strike net boats. There was a lot of pissing matches between recreational and commercail fishermen. When we saw strike net boats coming, we either let them ruin our fishing, or we ran into the birds and scared off the fish.
When the gill netters were in their hey day, it didn't hurt the Specks as bad as it did the Reds. Reds didn't migrate like Specks and Flounder did.
I don't think the Speck fishing is near as good now as it was back then. Anybody could throw them old double speck rigs or H&H cocahoes on a lead head and catch all the Specks you wanted.
I think the weirs is hurting the shrimp/bait in the marshes, which is hurting everythign else down the line.
Lots of spawning area are blocked off too.
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