Commercial Bycatch, Dead on the Beach.

Spanish Mackerel from 10 inches to this 2 ft+ Beauty

Dead Tuna On The Beach

2 of Dozens of Rotting Redfish & Black Drum Thousands of Poagies, Juvenile Redfish 2-4"s, and Croakers

4.5 Ft Loggerhead Turtle

8 Ft Leatherback Sea Turtle (Endangered Species)

We get checked by Wildlife and Fisheries Agents regularly for licenses and they ask to see in your ice chest for undersize fish! If you have a fish that is 1/2 inch short you get arrested, commercial netters dump these awsome fish and mammals regularly! The whole system stinks! What is wrong with this picture?

Bob, I have just been wondering if there are any pogy boats around in your
area.... These pogy boats are really factory ships,, Each one carries 2
smaller boats that carry a long,long ,long net. .When an airplane spots a huge
school of pogys the factory ship rushes over to the school and drops the small
boats into the water where they encircle the school and hold them in the net ,
then the ship comes over and drops a big suction hose down in the net full of
fish and sucks them up into some kind of a huge press which compresses them
and blows the blood and the liquid stuff back into the water, the solid stuff
is used for oil, fertilizer,etc...There are about 12 or 15 of these boats and
they are working all the time ,when the conditions are right.. Sometimes they
come up to about 400 yds from the beach..There are supposed to throw
everything back that isn't pogy ,, But even when they throw the big reds back
most of them are dead or bad hurt. Sometimes the net breaks and thousands of
dead fish wash up on the beach.... when this happenes the pogy company sends a
big front end loader out and cleans up the mess. Bill.

Pogy Boat Photos: Click Here!

We were fishing Saturday morning as huge schools of juvenile Spanish Mackerel swam and darted in tiny arcs out of the water snipping off even the toughest superlines and I lost lures to the "Scissor Fish"! Trawl boats were dragging close to the beach killing the Macs by the thousands and dumping them over the side as bycatch. We caught and released some under the 14 inch limit. If we kept one we would have gotten a $220.00 fine per fish, yet a wildlife agents truck will sometimes drive over hundreds of fish on the beach.

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