I think we would all agree that as Louisianans we want our fisheries to be managed by science and not by politics. The lack of science is why this is even being brought up. If you want fisheries to be scientifically driven, there has to be science there. There is no science there, it is needed. The commission meeting will simply say there is not enough data on tripletail and that there exists a need for further studies. That is ALL that will happen. If you go to a meeting you can see how these things work. Not going to a meeting on a subject you are passionate about on and griping about it is like griping about a politician and not voting
There are hundreds of books, dissertations, theses, and pamphlets about speckled trout biology/ecology and probably tens of thousands on largemouth bass and we all have access to that info, but that doesn't exist for tripletail.
A good portion of people can probably tell you where and when trout spawn, how many times they spawn, etc., but who on here (without the use of Google) can name one thing about the spawning ecology/biology of a tripletail
Where do they spawn? Louisiana coast? When do they spawn? Gulf? How long to reach sexual maturity? Two? Ten? How long do they live? If they reach sexual maturity at a relatively young age like trout then they can withstand high limits or none at all. If they take a long time to reach sexual maturity such as the red snapper (cough cough
)then there MAY be some steps that need to be taken just to ensure that we are not going to overharvest them. (Please don't kill this thread with red snapper talks
)
Yeah, during certain times of the year you can catch tripletail in Big Lake and Pontchartrain around crab traps, you can catch em on weed lines in the gulf, and catch em around some rigs, but what else does anyone know about tripletail in Louisiana besides how to catch them during a few months out of the year?