Not that long ago there wasn't a winter off shore fluke fishery. Now these fish are harvested by commercials year round and worse if you've read any of my previous posts it coincides with the primary fluke spawning season. These fish are pounded when they're concentrated in large schools during their offshore migration. Does anyone here believe the commercial guys cast their lines, steam 50 - 100 miles off shore and keep the smaller fluke which could fetch 40 - 50% less in value back at the docks? The larger females are targeted, smaller fluke tossed back dead and God only knows what impact this has on the spawn and survival rates of eggs. For starters, NMFS should close the season until this fishery is figured out. It's closed to recreational anglers, close it from September to at minimum the end of November to commercial dragging if not longer.

FMP needs to address the significantly higher prices larger fluke fetch wholesale. If all fluke were valued the same at the docks, hygrading at sea would effectively be eliminated since the economic benefit no longer exists.

There's a reason everyone is complaining about this fluke seasons, NMFS regulations have annihilated the female population of this stock. Reproduction has been obliterated. There is no right to how NOAA / NMFS is managing this fishery. If the biomass exploded exponentially between 1989 and 2002 by 600% when catch averaged more than 50% every year of SSB, why is it tanking today when annual catch has been reduced to ~15% of SSB? And why at that same time when recreational anglers were allowed 8 fish at 14 inches was the stock flourishing? By default, we were harvesting less breeders and recruitmentt numbers were significantly higher. The data is there for everyone to see. it's being ignored because of politics.

There's no good ending to this story as long as NMFS maintains their current ideology of managing catch through size increases. The fishery using that management philosophy is doomed.