Costa Rica

A United States based world fisheries conservation association is gunning for punishment to be dished out, after a sportfishing boat was attacked by a commercial Venezuelan tuna purse seining boat and a helicopter off of Costa Rica’s coast.

This incident was reported, and is well documented, on The Billfish Foundation’s website: http://www.billfish.org.

The past August 1st, at just about 3PM, a United States sportfishing boat, the Silver-Rod-O, owned by Gary Carter, a TBF member, of Duluth, GA., was assaulted by the other craft, Venezuelan flagged tuna purse seiner La Rosa Mistica (The Mystic Rose), while minding its own business some 15 miles off the shores of Garza, Costa Rica.

According to Gary, the Silver-Rod-O was minding its own business, trolling around a school of spinner dolphin for yellow fin tuna and billfish, when a helicopter off of the La Rosa Mistica, began to circle overhead.

“We were celebrating one of our guest’s first-ever sailfish release, when the seiner veered from its course and headed directly toward our boat. The helicopter then began making passes over the anglers and as the seiner came closer and began setting its net, the helicopter started dropping incendiary devises around the Silver-Rod-O and the school of spinners.”

“Several explosives landed within 50 meters of the boat. The purse seiner continued to power straight toward our boat,” Carter said, “It was threatening to either encircle us in their net or to plow us into the sea unless we abandoned the school of dolphin. Rather than endanger our guests, we retreated and watched and listened as the La Rosa Mistica closed the net and its crew obnoxiously celebrated its victory.”

Just goes to show you, be careful where you fish! Hopefully, the Costa Rican authorities will look into the matter, and justice will be served.

A 22-pound, 5-ounce largemouth bass (picture) has been caught by Manabu Kurita, a pro staffer representing Deps Tackle Co. in Japan. This breaks George Perry’s old record from June 2, 1932. The bass caught by Perry in Montgomery Lake, Georgia 77 years ago weighed 22-pound, 4-ounce – just a tad less than the new Japanese record bass. Kurita’s bass was 29.4 inches long (no girth measurements have been released). It was reportedly weighed on a certified scale.

Kurita caught his 22-pound, 5-ounce bass in Lake Biwa (琵琶湖, Biwa-ko), in Japan’s Shiga Prefecture. Formed by tectonic shifts almost 4 million years ago, Lake Biwa is one of the world’s twenty oldest lakes and home to a very rich ecosystem that includes 58 described endemic species. It is the largest freshwater lake in the country and covers nearly 259 square miles.

After holding the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) all-tackle world record for 77 year, it seems as if Perry might have to if not step down then at least share the first place with his fellow Japanese angler. IGFA rules stipulate that a bass must weigh two ounces more than the current record holder to break the record, so Kurita’s fish will only tie it.

“It will tie [Perry’s record] if that’s the weight,” says Jason Schratwieser, record andconservation director for the game fish association. “For record fish weighing less than 25 pounds, the replacement record must weigh at least 2 ounces more than the existing record.”

In 2006, Mac Weakley caught a 25-pound, 1-ounce bass in Lake

Dixon, California, but he didn’t pursue the record since he accidently foul-hooked the fish, i.e. he didn’t hook the fish in the mouth.

The inclination to end up stuck on a hook seems to be a heritable trait in bass, according to a study published in a recent issue of the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

The study, which was carried out by researchers DP Philipp, SJ Cooke, JE Claussen, JB Koppelman, CD Suski, and DP Burkett, focused on Ridge Lake, an Illinois lake where catch-and-release fishing has been enforced and strictly regulated for decades. Each caught fish has been measured, tagged and then released back into the wild.

Picture by: Clinton & Charles Robertson from Del Rio, Texas & San Marcos, TX, USA

David Philipp and coauthors commenced their study in 1977, checking the prevalence of Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) on the hooks of fishermen. After four years, the experimental lake was drained and 1,785 fish were collected. When checking the tags, Philipp and his team found that roughly 15 percent of the Largemouth bass population consisted of specimens that had never been caught. They also found out that certain other bass specimens had been caught over and over again.

To take the study one step further, the research team collected never caught bass specimens (so called Low Vulnerability, LV, specimens) and raised a line of LV offspring in separate brood ponds. Likewise, the team collected bass specimens caught at least four times (High Vulnerability, HV, specimens) and placed them in their own brooding ponds to create a HV line.

The first generation (F1) offspring from both lines where then marked and placed together in the same pond. During the summer season, anglers where allowed to visit the pond and practise catch-and-release, and records where kept of the number of times each fish was caught.

As the summer came to an end, HV fish caught three or more times where used to create a new line of HV offspring, while LV fish caught no more than once became the parents of a new LV line.

The second generation (F2) offspring went through the same procedure as their parents; they were market, released into the same pond, and subjected to anglers throughout the summer. In fall, scientists gathered the fish that had been caught at least three times or no more than once and placed them in separate ponds to create a third generation (F3) HV and LV fish.

A following series of controlled fishing experiments eventually showed that the vulnerability to angling of the HV line was greater than that of the LV line, and that the differences observed between the two lines increased across later generations.

If this is true not only for bass but for other fish species as well, heavy hook-and-line angling pressure in lakes and rivers may cause evolutionary changes in the fish populations found in such lakes. Hence, a lake visited by a lot of anglers each year may eventually develop fish populations highly suspicious of the fishermen’s lure.

More information can be found in the paper published in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society: Philipp, DP, SJ Cooke, JE Claussen, JB Koppelman, CD Suski and

DP Burkett (2009) Selection for vulnerability to angling in Largemouth Bass. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 138, pp. 189–199.

I usually don’t like to write about rumours and speculations but sometimes they are interesting enough to warrant a few rows here in the news section. There is a growing speculation and fear among tuna fisherman that tuna fishing will be strictly regulated or banned before the end of the year.

The speculations state that a complete ban on Tune fishing in the entire Atlantic Ocean will be announced in November during the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna meeting in Morocco. This would be a result of plummeting tuna populations and increased pressure from environmental organisations. American fishermen are believed to be among those supporting a complete ban which might be true as the US have a very small tuna fishing industry. The only exception from the ban would be sport fishing.

There is also a rumour that the tuna fishing ban won’t be limited to the Atlantic but that a global tuna fishing ban might be close to being announced. It is unclear whether the ban would include all tuna species or only the blue fin tuna but the later seems more likely.

Personally I find the announcement of a global or even an Atlantic tuna fishing ban very doubtful even if I would appreciate the imitative. (Despite the fact that I love grilled tuna) A tuna fishing ban in the Mediterranean seems more likely but might also meet more resistance due to large fishing operations present there. It is also doubtful if such a ban would be respected in the Mediterranean as the fishermen there have a history of breaking the rules such as in this incident I reported about earlier this year.

What do you guys think? Will we see a Tuna ban before the end of the year? Is one needed?

A video about the snakehead situation in the Potomac river. In certain areas of the river snakeheads now are established and competing with local fish species such as local bass. Hopefully they will be kept confined to certain parts of the river and won´t spread to other parts of the country. We will just have to wait and see. in the meen time the snakehead is turning into a popular game fish luring sport fishers to the area. For more info see the almost 3 min long video.

Releasing caught snakeheads are illegal and catches should be reported to the local fish and wildlife service.