Fish Limit Etiquette

    Here in NC gags are the only grouper around and the limit is only 1 per person. I'm a little better than my buddies and usually wind up shooting more than 1 before we limit out, but I feel kind of bad about it. Interested in how you guys work this problem. Do you only shoot your personal limit and let the rest of your buddies get thiers? I keep diving for other fish but when I see a 15lb gag its darn hard not too shoot it. Some of my buddies are not great and we hunt deep water, left to thier own devices I'm not real confident they would wind up getting theirs. Yesterday 4 of us in the water I shot 3 of the 4 grouper and a Cobia. My friends don't seem to mind, we split all the fish evenly no matter who got them, but again I feel a bit guilty.

    Well, where I dive we have no limits and I always have fish to give away. My friends love me. .. :rolleyes1:


    But, sometimes me and my partners have shot so many fish that I ask them to leave. I think that those days when fish seem to be stupid are not challenging nor fun. I also think that if we do kill too much fish, there's not going to be enough for my kids when they grow.


    But that's me. ;)

    Marco Melis

    A bad day fishing is ALWAYS better than a good day at work.

    Personally, I think that locations that have personal(individual) limits have them for a reason probably to protect the species. So maybe you could get your limit and let your friends worry about their own. If they can't land fish then that should be an incentive to get better. Besides, if you take more than you're supposed to you're only hurting yourself in the long run because you're technically overfishing your own hunting grounds.


    Just my .02,


    Chase

    Relax & Go Spearfishing

    For me it mostly depends on who I am with and what the purpose of the trip is. I have a couple friends who are very competitive and would get mad if I shot their limit.


    However when we take trips to the keys or Bahamas and such the trips can get expensive. gas for boats and trucks adds up and we want to "get our moneys worth" we generally shoot much closer to our limits and if one guy is having a bad day (last time it was me) the others will make up for it.


    I am not familiar with the laws in your area but in Florida the letter of the law says it is illegal to shoot/catch more than your individual limit which includes other peoples limits even if under the boat limit. However it would be very difficult for them to catch/prove who shot what. The limits are supposed to be set so that the number of fish caught by any one diver or group is sustainable. However down here the limits are a mess and we rarely shoot our limits of anything except grouper. And if we limit on grouper it was a good day of fishing.

    We definitly don't limit every time. There's not many good days to run offshore here in a 20'CC, it gets rough, so when we can make it out we try and make it count. I'm not worried about overfishing my spots. I've probably only taken 25 grouper this year and we left that many still swimming around this one spot yesterday, which was only a small area in a large field of live bottom. Not many people dive here and they are tough on hook and line. I'm also only going to be here maybe another year, military.
    My buddies got into this with me at the same time last year. I just train harder and take better care of my gear, plus I'm the one with the boat and the spots, so that makes me feel better. I think I went a little overboard yesterday though, next time I'll slow my roll and give them more opportunity.

    Quote from japsw

    This gets abused on mini season, boats with 10+ people and only 2 harvesting :nono:


    I was wondering when this would come up. I used to ALWAYS make it to my spots in the middle keys starting when I lived in Wahongton D.C. And of course continuing the 7 years I lived in Ft. Lauderdale (left in 2002) for the mini (sports) Lobster Season opener.


    I saw ths time and time again (boat full of people and 1 or 2 divers) and always found some a-hole that had no scruples take lobsters from a brown/wood hole (lobster trap) after the commercial season started.


    Ethics and manners seemed to go out the window during the Sport mini lobster three days (I think it was 3 days)


    It always amazed me how many bugs there were during the sport season and how damn few (if any) towards the end of the commercial season.


    On OP's thread - take one only. Our resources are drying up nothing now like just a decade ago. My .02 cents


    2 days, after the first few days of commercial they rape every last one, then they blame the rec guys for slow harvest the rest of the year :rolleyes1:

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