Quote:
Originally Posted by Reefman
We've become our own worst enemy. To say that trout fishing is as good as it was 20 years ago is not facing the reality of fishing success, or lack there of, today. The presure placed on our resources of trout is infinitely higher than it was back then. I beleive that fishing presure has indeed impacted the fisheries. BL looks like a parking lot on weekends with all the boats beatin the waters. T Butte can have over 50 boats in a small area on calm days. Diamond not much better. The rigs out of
vermilion looks like LaFonda; you need a number to wait in line to fish live bait. Cocodrie is overcrowded on any given day.There are far more people fishing today than there were in the 80-90s.
We are the custodians of our resources today. Every effort should be made to acknowledge what problems face our natural resources and act accordingly. Responsibilities lay with us to protect them. We need factual information by our WLF along with coastal scientific studies specific to trout populations made public. I just can't see our trout fishing taking the pounding it has over the past ten years continue without a colapse in this fisheries. Just MHO.....
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We are our own worst enemies if we insist on managing wildlife with anecdotal opinions of anglers rather than comprehensive and sound scientific data and valid stock assessments.
Human pressure on spotted seatrout has increased, but pressure from all other natural predators on seatrout has decreased substantially. Most prey species tend to move to areas where there is more food and less threat from predators. The expansion of oil platforms in the Gulf provides more open water habitat than ever, and the nutrient loading from the Mississippi river has increased the biomass of their prey between four and sixfold. Combined with the decrease in sharks in open water and the increase in anglers inshore suggest that significant fractions of the seatrout populations are simply spending more time in the open Gulf where there are fewer predators and more prey.
The spotted seatrout is much more flexible than other inshore species with respect to acceptable habitat, and it is unlikely that human harvest provide the most significant life history bottleneck. Habitat use does not necessarily imply habitat dependence. Concluding that a wildife population is threatened because they are not in the same place where they used to be has been proven to be bad science time and again. Whitetail deer populations have shifted over the decades from wild woodlands to prefer farmland and suburbia. Red Snapper have shifted their population from the eastern Gulf of Mexico to the northern and western Gulf of Mexico. Spotted seatrout may have simply learned to avoid the inshore predators in favor of safer habitat with more abundant food.