In case you missed it, and if you did you are not alone, you can no longer keep a black sea bass this fishing season. As of Oct. 17, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service has shut down the black sea bass fishery for all recreational anglers fishing the waters of the South Atlantic.
The reason is overfishing, of course. You see, the government number-crunchers have determined that you and I and all of our hook-and-line offshore fishing brethren from North Carolina to Key West have been hauling out black sea bass to the tune of some 341,747 pounds (gutted weight) since June 1.
Even though the new bag limit in place since then has been five black sea bass per angler, somehow fishing was so robust for black sea bass, we all just jammed up our freezers full of them.
As a result, we must now stop fishing for them, and cannot take one home until June 1, 2012.
Anyone who has ever reeled in a sea bass knows they may average 3 pounds. A 6-pounder is huge and rare. That means that some 110,000 sea bass have been taken off the reefs in the past 4.5 months or roughly 22,000 bag limits have gone to the fish cleaning tables.
Read the complete opinion piece from TCPalm.com