[Broad Bill]

Keep in mind, right or wrong, science assigns a 25% annual mortality rate to every age class. Combined with the level of commercial discard mortality when these fish are headed offshore and staging offshore in the winter, 75% of the body of smaller fish you mention will be dead in two years. Now add in the stock being pounded every year between September to November by a more efficient commercial fleet, that optimism will disappear. Under those circumstances older age classes will take a decade to rebuild once changes to the regulations are put in place before recruitment levels are restored and the gender / age imbalances created in this stock by the regulation are corrected.