Upcoming Events
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Buddy List
The buddy list is meant to help members with boats to find additional crew members to share the expenses, or members without boats who want to go fishing. Please use this listing for all fishing trips including our tournaments. To have your name in these lists please send an e-mail to with tour name and phone number.

Members with boats needing mates
Bob Cannon 301-663-3024

Members wanting to go fishing
on boats:

Jay Betts 301-831-9736
Bob Cannon 301-663-3024
Bob Lowry 301-898-7111
John Sivinski 301-620-0993

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More on Flounder: continued
In 2003, seafood lovers brought their industrial-strength appetites to Red Lobster, consuming so many snow crab legs that the nation's largest seafood chain was forced to pull its $20 all-you-can-eat special from menus nationwide.

At the heart of the Magnuson-Stevens Act is a grinding regulatory process that has frustrated fishermen and environmentalists and even regulators.

Eight regional fishery councils oversee the nation's fisheries, in cooperation with a network of scientific committees and under the guidance of the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The councils are locked in a constant tug of war between two conflicting duties: preventing overfishing while supporting regional fishing communities.

The adversarial system has spawned numerous lawsuits and mixed results. For example, the New England Fishery Management Council imposed numerous restrictions on fishing to help the region's supplies of cod - the fish that built New England.

But rather than take bold action to limit the annual cod harvest, the council more often took half-steps, such as cutting a few days off the season, says John Williamson, a former council member and commercial fisherman who now works for the Ocean Conservancy, a non-profit environmental group.

"What we've perpetuated is a state of chronic depletion," Williamson says.

The incremental approach hasn't helped the fish or the region's once-dominant fishing industry.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the species are different, but the dynamics are similar. In mid-August, a majority of members on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council voted to postpone new regulations designed to ease pressure on the region's prized red snapper, whose population has been depleted to less than 4% of its historic abundance.

"I can't believe the majority voted to delay," says Julie Morris, a council member and director of environmental studies at New College in Sarasota, Fla. "I'm frustrated. We've been allowing overfishing to continue for almost a decade."

Chincoteague Island, VA
Fishing Report by Charlie Koski

More on Flounder!!!
Fishing communities wait for the hammer to fall:
By Larry Wheeler, Gannett News Service, 8/28/2006

WASHINGTON - With another summer drawing to a close, boat captains and their flounder-fishing customers on the Jersey shore wonder if they'll be back next year.
A federal agency is considering a dramatic cut in the amount of flounder - known locally as fluke - that day-tripper anglers can haul from cool Atlantic waters in 2007.

"What it will mean to us is a virtual shutdown of our fluke fishery," says Tony Bogan, a 4th generation captain whose boats are docked near Brielle, N.J.

Tensions are growing in fishing communities from Portland, Maine, to Seattle as federal regulations force further limits on commercial and sports fishing.

This fall, Congress is expected to update the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a 30-year-old law that regulates fishing in U.S. waters 3 miles to 200 miles offshore.

A bill approved by the Senate earlier this year seeks to strengthen regulations that critics argue have not been successful in rebuilding fish and shellfish populations depleted by decades of heavy harvesting.

A version of the bill pending in the House would take a less punitive approach, to avoid causing economic harm to fishermen, while rebuilding fish populations over a longer period of time.

Hearty appetites:

When it comes to seafood, Americans seem to know few boundaries.

Americans consume an estimated 4 billion pounds of seafood a year. That's about 16 pounds of fish and shellfish for every man, woman and child.

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For daily fishing reports check out www.captbobs-marina.com/
NewsReports.php
and
www.stevesbaitandtackle.com/
NewsReports.php

Report from Bill's Fishing Shack: by Bill Johnson
None Submitted.