Quick Question About Fishing

[reed1v]

Originally Posted by Hud3

We caught plenty of mahi-mahi at 6 - 6.5 knots in the Gulf Stream, Sargasso Sea, and sometimes between islands in the West Indies. Too slow for wahoo, though.

selective places, sure. like the banks, itcz, almost any delta region and up to 100 miles out. heck, we caught fresh water fish almost 100 miles off of brazil once. good old amazon discharge. but generally using the shipping routes(admiralty) for ocean passages did not result in a lot of fish fries. btw the old charts were produced for sailing ships, not turbo charged mechanical monsters, so are perfect for those who stick to rags.

[atoll]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

How about laws governing fishing around the world? What do you do when coming to the next island or country if you get stopped? Are most countries fishing laws (and licenses) not the same as in the USA? Here you need a license for each state you are fishing in.

I saw you need to get a permit for the Bahamas, but haven't seen any others.

after the 12 mile limit,a sailboats catch is not really something fisheries protection vessels are going to inspecting your 4000 ton hold for!

[reed1v]

damn good question. most folks just fish without regard to the regs. and fishing is regulated by the international law of the sea 200 mile zones. so skip the 3 and 12 mile stuff. need a sea lawyer for that question. suspect technically you do need 138 permits to drop a hook. there may be something about incidental catches(non commercial) that spare the sailor from all this bureaucratic nightmare spreading around the world. btw: technically a country owns its citizens. you are property of your state. my how things have changed in the past 50 some odd years.

[Tingum]

In the Bahamas a fishing license comes with your cruising permit, be sure to ask for the spearfishing endorsement. It cost nothing but needs to be on your license. Now in reality I have never been asked for a license in the 38 years I have been here! Offshore no one is going to bother you!

[stevensuf]

I thought a lot of places did fishing rights to 200m off shore.. now if i had a spliff 12 miles off shore......

[reed1v]

true. most places are not going to pick on a sailboat passing through their eez. some tourist spots in the med and the carib however do get anal about things, especially colonies of fuddy duddy euro powers. otherwise its still live and let live. the ocean tends to mellow folks, except of course those on high speed killing machines.

[bobconnie]

Well maybe Im an Outlaw but Ive never in 50+ yrs had an Official of any country look in my freezer or ask if I caught any fish in there waters !!! now I buy lics in mexcio and the bahamas sure but out in blue water I eat what we can fresh, and freeze whats left! I really have found when I ck into a new country with my papers Im told if I need a lic for thier waters ! At least thats been our experince ! don't know about others but I have habit of not telling anyone more then they need to know !! Just my 2 cents

[Matt Johnson]

Originally Posted by bobconnie

Well maybe Im an Outlaw

I had a feeling that would be the general response, but feared getting a gigantic fine for not having a permit of something in the Caribbean.

[Sailor g]

Originally Posted by sck5

One trick they taught me before my first passage was to take a small bottle of liquor of some kind - The cheap airplane bottles work well - and squirt some cheap rum or vodka into their gill when you land them on the side deck. They die almost instantly and it way easier than beating them to death with a winch handle.

We learned that too-unfortunately AFTER catching our first fish. We hooked & gaffed it but it was strong & flopped all over our white aft deck. It looked like 'Silence of the Lambs'!! Then somehow to add insult to injury-it bounced off the hook & flopped back into the water. We had dolphins following us for days because they heard we feed them. LOL! We now use cheap rum-for the fish too!!

[DeborahLee]

Another quick question. I was thinking of getting a license and someone told me that they know a cruiser that got a ticket for having a filet someone had given them for dinner on board. It seems you can't have any filet fish on board you have to take them home. How does that work when the boat is home. I asked a couple DER people and all they would say is "that's kind of a grey area up to the warden that stops you." Any thoughts etc?

[Cheechako]

I think it is up to the common sense of the warden. For instance, here in the PNW if you have crab on board, you must keep the shell (carapace) so a warden can determine if the crab was of legal size. etc etc. If you had a store bought filet, you would have the package to show them. FWIW, sailboats seem to get less attention than fishing boats from the powers that be....

[Teknav]

You can always tell them the fish followed me, against my will! Mauritz

[sww914]

Blue & silver north of the border, green & yellow south. I caught so many fish on the outside of Baja that my wife asked me to stop fishing for a couple of days because you have to slow the boat to pull them up.
I caught them on squid, cedar plugs, bucktail jigs, like anything I threw out there. I caught some big big tuna that I'm glad that they broke the line, I didn't want a damned 300# tuna on the boat!
If you're where the fish are you will catch them. I caught those between 5 miles and 85 miles off, in 300-6000 feet of water.
If you sail between Ensenada and Bahia Magalena, you will catch fish.
I troll just behind the bubbles in my boat's wake. Let the lure pop out of the water occasionally.

[rebel heart]

I'm a little obsessive, but I like fishing. Most sailors are not fishermen anymore than they are surfers. Despite spending lots of time on the water, it always surprises me how few crossover activities sailors do (scuba, fishing, spear fishing, surfing, kite boarding, etc). There are definitely people out there doing it, but not nearly as many as I would have thought before.

Anyway, we have:

- Three handlines on cuban yo-yos. Typically rigged with a bare cedar plug, a blue and white tuna feather, and a tuna clone. They do surprisingly well but you'll never catch huge fish on them. Unattended hand lines are hard to beat for their simplicity but they've got some limitations.

- Penn Internaitonal with a Calstar rod. Beefy troller than can handle marlins and other big guys.

- Walmart special (Eagle Claw, I think?) spinning rig. I want something a little nicer but this works for now. For jigging from the boat, taking out in the dinghy to fish a point, or trolling when I'm feeling especially lazy and don't want to get the real trolling rod out.

The whole "too fast / too slow" thing is completely based on specie, body of water, and much else. Some fish want fast moving targets, some want slow moving. Some hunt the surface, some the middle, some the deep, and some change it up based on conditions.

It's helped me a lot to take fishing seriously. No one hunting deer would expect much success by just grabbing a rifle and heading into the hills, so it's not really a surprise that people have fishing gear but don't catch anything.

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by sww914

If you're where the fish are you will catch them.

That's about the high and the low of it. You can "do everything right" but if there's no fish around it really doesn't matter.