State: Saltwater guides can no longer fish alongside clients
Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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Stumble It!KENAI — Saltwater sport fishing charter guides will soon have to sit back and watch their clients fish.
New rules from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game say guides and their crew are prohibited from retaining any fish species while paying clients are on board the vessel.
Rules also state the number of lines that may be fished may not exceed the number of paying clients on board.
These restrictions go into effect May 24 and apply to the salt waters of Southcentral Alaska, including Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet and northern waters of waters of the Kodiak Island area.
Officials say too many halibut were harvested several years in a row, prompting the measure.
Community Discussion
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Give me a break!!!!
The charters aren't the reason for the reduction in Halibut.
How about putting some restrictions on the long-liners
Amen! Why keep hurting the little guy, when it's corporate companies raping our waters!
HELLO,Well said M1000! Leave the small business alone! It is hard enough to make it now days.
looks like the local charters are going to take a hit, when it is the comercial fishermen harvesting the most.
I'll try to be gentle and not too sarcastic in the light of the above comments, however mildly stated you are missing the point like the usually woefully uninformed suspects.
I come from an Alaskan coastal town and am (or was) a 3rd generation halibut fisherman.
Illness disqualified me from getting halibut shares under the IFQ program implemented in 1995.
It broke my heart and my wallet the rest of the way, but the disconnect from my family's pioneering the fishery hurt the worst.
My personal issues with IFQ's do not change the truth of the history of Alaska's halibut fishery however.
I agree the big fish processors are raping to the detriment of the common Alaskan, but that is the trawlers who account for nearly 20 million pounds a year in by-catch, not the quite selective and clean fishing small boat longline operators who nursed the halibut resource back into health via the International Pacific Halibut Commission over a span of 50 years after foreign fleets were finally excluded.
Most of you posters have no memory or knowledge of the sacrifices endured by family owned salmon fishing boats after kicking out at statehood Seattle and East coast owners of fish traps and canneries who decimated Alaskan waters, let alone the Russians, Japanese, Poles and a myriad of other nations killing off the halibut.
The plus side of this new law is that it stops literally hundreds of charter operators (many of them non-resident) from using their crew and selves for black marketing their fish to restaurants and others which had become a huge issue never accounted for until now.
7 days a week of captain and 1 or 2 crew members taking 2 fish per day each for the entire charter season under the old law just now changed, thousands and thousands of pounds by those purporting to be "guides".
Nope, purely commercial fishing without having to endure the sacrifices real commercial fishermen actually undergo and buy into while actually making the "sport fishery " even possible through multi-generational sacrifice in order to bring the stocks back from near depletion.
The trawlers who by-catch and never get called for it because of the money they've invested in Ted and Don are the one's deserving of your attention and comprehension, let alone your aspersions.
It's easy for some of you to denigrate those of us who have our lives invested in commercial fishing and its history, yet quite hard to take when disparaged of the good work we have put into making it viable for all sectors, and still we remain discounted and unappreciated out of ignorance.
Just try being successful and rewarded for your efforts, see what it gets you from the jealous.
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