They are doing it every day in Va and off the coast of North Carolina. Here is a report that was posted somewhere else 1/23/09-




Misbehaving Recs (and some Coms)

I thought about this for a while before posting. The longer I thought about it, the more I felt that it needed to be said.

Two Saturday's ago, I was off the VA and NC coast fishing for striper. We set the radar cursor on a 3nm distance, perpendicular to our southward movement. We ran just inside the 3nm limit all the way from VA Beach down to Corolla NC.

It was a beautiful day...almost a sheet of glass. Water temps were 36 deg when I passed the CBBT and they got warmer as I moved south. When I hit 40 deg water, I started seeing some bait and marks.

All the way down, we saw a lot of boats out about 3.5nm to 5nm from shore (I +put the radar cursor on them to check the distance). I was out 3nm and they were out another 1.5nm to 2nm.

Ran into the fleet just a bit south of Corolla. About 10 boats were inside the 3nm line, while it looked like about 150 were scattered from the line all the way out to about 5nm. I checked the radar cursor again to make sure I didn't make a mistake. Then I used the chart/radar overlay to see if I got the same distance on the chart. Both readings showed me at 2.985nm from shore (0.015 seems to be width of a pixel on my screen).

It simply blew me away to see such a large number of clearly illegal fishing going on. Yea, yea, I know...they were "targeting blue fish." If you believe that I have a bridge in AZ to sell. There were a few charters in the mix outside the line, but the majority were recs.

We talk conservation, but I guess far too many of us believe that conservation is for the "other guy," not us.

Guys...we have absolutely nothing to say about the commercial fishery, if we are going to be so flagrant about violating the fishing laws ourselves. We complain about the declining numbers of big stripers. We complain about Omega scooping up all the forage fish. We complain about the netters. But we had better start looking after our own misbehavior before we blame the "other guy" for the problem. I believe we [recs] are a big part of the problem. Based on what I saw two weeks ago, no one will convince me different.

I can kick myself for not having a pen and paper on board to write down boat names and hull registration numbers and calling them into the Coast Guard. Yesterday I bought a small whiteboard and dry-eraser pens to keep on board. From here on out, I won't leave home without it and the phone numbers of the MD, VA, and NC authorities. You can bet your sweet bippy that I plan to report them.

My $0.02